by Anna Roberts
When she was just low enough to read the highway signs she flew north to Tavernier, seeking out the green awning of Eli’s place beside the marina. At this height the babble of human thought was even louder than it had been during the night, conscious minds mulling over the cosmic questions of American life – Coke or Pepsi, can we make the mortgage, how many calories in skinny chai latte?
But it wasn’t hard to find Charlie in among them.
His thoughts were too rapid to follow in complete words, too frantic, but it was exactly this hummingbird beat of his mind that drew Blue into land.
...sleep, God, if I could just get some fucking sleep...
Somewhere in the background was Ruby, nearly as frightened as he was. She was thinking about grouting...?
Blue had never landed before, so she was surprised to find that she dissolved straight through the roof of Eli’s old apartment. Guess that solved the unanswered question of whether she was even physically here or not; her body was still kneeling on the floor of Gloria’s basement.
The tiles in the kitchen area looked suspiciously clean, and Blue then understood why Ruby was thinking about grouting. You could never get it out of tile grout, especially the pale kind. Somehow Blue could smell it; the unmistakable guilty smell of bleach and blood. Who died? she thought, and Ruby’s scared thoughts rose to a babble of voices and images – romance novels and eyes full of blood and an old man with a wolf’s fang and a gaze like flint, all tangled with thoughts of widowhood and a fear so constant and clear that Blue understood it immediately; Ruby’s swamp wolf husband had come asking questions about the others, the ones Joe and Grayson had killed. There would be consequences.
“Oh God,” she said, and disembodied as she was she could still somehow feel her heart beat. A door opened and Ruby poked her little bleached head out, peering around as if she’d heard a voice.
Blue ducked behind the counter, conscious that she wasn’t wearing any clothes. Ruby narrowed her eyes, obviously tuned into that frequency where spirits whispered. Blue held her breath, but then she heard Charlie moan – whether inside or outside his head she didn’t know – and then he came into the kitchen.
He looked exhausted, like he hadn’t slept in days, and he probably hadn’t. Yael had always been especially lively whenever Gloria was asleep, taking advantage of the lapse in her consciousness to slip out and invade Blue’s dreams, or just to smash the light fittings. It figured he’d see sleep as a waste of time; he had no real concept of just how essential it was to the human body.
The book was on top of the microwave, but when Blue reached towards it she felt her fingers melt through it the way her feet had melted through the roof. As one Ruby and Charlie – or Yael – turned their heads, like they’d felt a presence in the room, but then Blue heard Charlie say ‘please’ in his head and Yael turned him around towards the coffee maker.
...I can’t any more, I’m going crazy – let me sleep, God, Jesus, please – just let me sleep...
Yael slopped out a triple strength belt of coffee; Charlie tried to lock his jaw and clench his teeth, but Yael was in control, and Charlie was beyond tired. Blue had been through her plan over and over in her head as she headed south – get Charlie into the house, exorcise Yael somehow and leave him trapped in the house while they figured out how to get rid of him for once and for all. Only now she knew it wasn’t going to work. Charlie was half-dead in there. As he swallowed down the coffee she could hear him thinking that his heart couldn’t handle much more.
Is he gonna turn when Charlie turns? thought Ruby. I’ll put him in a cage. I’ll run the hell away.
“It’s nearly time,” Ruby said. “And I’ve done everything you asked me to do.”
Yael filled the coffee cup again. Charlie groaned. “Everything but unlock the bedroom door,” said Yael, making Blue shudder so hard she was afraid they’d see the air shiver where she stood. “I told you, Ruby Red – the only way I can stop you from turning is if I’m in you, and the only way I’m in you is if you invite me. I can’t just slip under the skin of a witch unless she wants me there.”
“I invited you already. Help me – I’m gonna lose my baby.”
Yael sighed. “If you lose it we’ll just have to make another one,” he said. “A better one.”
“But –”
“ – but nothing.” Charlie’s fist came down hard on the counter; Blue felt him wince. “If I go into you then Charlie’s a dead man. I’m the only thing keeping him alive.”
Ruby stared dully at him, like she was trapped in a nightmare and had given up all hope of screaming herself awake.
“You son of a bitch,” said Blue, and Charlie’s head snapped up. She could feel Yael stretch within him, building pressure inside his head until Charlie screamed internally; Yael was trying to reach out, conscious that he wasn’t the only spirit in the room.
She took off, flying back through the ceiling and into the bruising sky. The traffic was thicker now, people going home, their heads full of dinner, television, workouts, laundry and homework.
...heat up some of that leftover lasagna, maybe. Stop by McDonalds and grab some chicken nuggets for Miss Picky can a kid get malnutrition from McNuggets did I read that somewhere...
...come on, come on, turn already you drive like old people fuck...
...you can’t get pregnant if you do it on your period, right...
...oh shit why did I think this was a good idea come on come on come on, it hurts – this is your fault, Blue...
If she had had a body it would have fallen out of the sky at that moment. The shock of hearing her name was nearly enough to jolt her right back to the basement, but she hung on, just long enough to recognize one of the babbling minds stuck in traffic.
It was Gabe.
She opened her eyes, cold, her cheek against the concrete and a filthy taste of absinthe in her mouth. “Shit,” she said. You stole a man’s car and killed his best friend and he still came after you. If it hadn’t been the night of the full moon it would have been romantic.
Blue scrambled to her feet, gathered up her clothes and hurried upstairs. Her phone was on the coffee table where she’d left it. She dialed and got Joe.
“Get out of there,” she said, first things first. “The swamp wolves know what you did.”
“What?” he said. “Where are you? Where’s Gabe? Is he with you?”
“I’ll deal with that,” she said. “Just do as I say, okay? The swampers are coming for you.”
“They’ll have to come after the full moon,” said Joe. “We’re going nowhere. Axl’s already wolfed out. Where are you?”
“In the Keys.”
“Are you insane? You do realize Gabe’s coming after you? What did you say to him?”
“The wrong thing, obviously,” she said, awkwardly fastening her bra with one hand. “He wasn’t supposed to follow me.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Yeah. I think I just saw him stuck in traffic outside Tavernier.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“Never mind? Do you know what time it is? You’re lucky I can still speak English. He can’t be stuck in traffic. He’s gonna turn!”
She’d gone easy on the absinthe on the grounds that it made her retch, but she was sure she still had enough booze in her blood to make driving a problem. “I’ll get him,” she said. “And you’d better sit tight up there – secure everything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, it’s complicated,” she said. “And we’re out of time. So, just...you know. Try not to get eaten by swamp wolves, and I’ll call you on the flip side, okay?”
Joe sighed down the phone. “Just once,” he said. “Just once I’d like to have a quiet, stress-free full moon...”
“I know. I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, it wasn’t supposed to go down this way.”
“I know that, but don’t do anything stu –”
Blue hung up before she lost her nerve.
She had every intention of doing something stupid.
The mess and the horror of it all was nearly overwhelming as she headed back towards Tavernier, conscious of every reflex in a way she hadn’t been since she was sixteen and learning to drive. So much for her plan; she’d meant to save Charlie, not kill him, but now it was looking like there was no way to do one without the other.
She tried to call Gabe and was shocked when he answered; he had a diver’s obsession with safety and didn’t even like the hands-free.
“Oh God, it’s you,” he said.
“Of course it’s me. Where are you?”
“Stuck, duh. Are you seeing this traffic?”
“Holy shit, Gabe.”
“What?” he said, with a hiss of breath that might have been pain. The sky was streaked with scarlet and mauve. “You thought I was just gonna read your little note and let you walk out of my life?”
She swallowed. “That was the plan, yeah.”
Gabe was silent for a moment. She pictured his bones cracking under his skin and felt desperately afraid for him. “Nice try,” he said, and his voice flooded her with relief. “You don’t get rid of me that easily.”
The tears came before she could stop them. “I’m sorry,” she said, staring in frustration at the stream of cars ahead of her. It was like a bottleneck this far south – no interstates and no road nearly wide enough to cope with the volume of tourist traffic. They could be here for hours, and he didn’t have them.
“Why did you follow me?” Blue said. “You can’t be here, Gabe. You just can’t.” She quickly squashed down another thought of Charlie, controlled like a puppet from within, his body screaming for sleep and ridden beyond endurance. What happened when Charlie couldn’t take any more?
“Too bad. I am. When were you going to tell me, Blue?”
He always asked the hardest questions. “I...I don’t know.”
She heard him exhale slowly. The cars rolled forward.
“So, what?” he said. “You were just going to sit on it? Not tell me?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was trying to figure out how to tell you.” Oh God, this hurt. “Because I knew you’d hate me when I did.”
Another hiss of breath. There was no definite way of predicting when he would turn; sometimes it happened at sunset, sometimes in the middle of the night, but all they knew for sure was that he needed to be caged in time for when it did.
“I’m sorry,” he said, which was the weirdest thing he could say. She’d killed Eli and he was saying sorry to her? “I never wanted this. I told you this would happen; I’d drag you into all this...all this horrible shit.”
His voice broke.
“Gabe? Are you okay?”
He stifled a moan. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
“You’re not. I can hear it in your voice.”
Someone honked behind her and she realized the traffic was moving again. She edged forward and there, just a few cars back on the other side of the road, was Joe’s truck. “I can see you,” she said. “Can you see me?”
He was breathing hard. “Yeah. I think so.”
Oh shit. If he turned now he’d jam the traffic up even further and people would start getting out of their cars to find out why he wasn’t moving. She imagined them approaching the shuddering, howling truck and wondered if Gabe was strong enough to break the glass.
“Okay, listen to me,” she said. “I want you to pull over.”
“Are you nuts? I’m jammed in nose to tail here.”
“Just do it. The next time you move.”
“And what then? Hope people are going to just drive on past? I know the average American motorist is pretty jaded, but I think even they’re going to rubberneck if a truck contains a guy turning into a werewolf.”
“They’re more likely to look if you’re blocking their way. Signal – come on. They’re moving.”
She craned her neck and could just make out the blink of Gabe’s turn signal. There was an angry cacophony of horns as he nosed the truck towards the side of the jam-packed road. “There is no way this ends well,” he said, the strain in his voice clear now. Blue could just about make out the shape of his head and shoulders behind the windshield; he was shaking. Worse, the window wasn’t all the way up. There was a five inch gap and soon he’d no longer have thumbs to wind it up. Sure, it wasn’t big enough for a wolf to get through, but big enough for a helpful passer by to stick a hand through. And probably lose it.
“You’re going to have to trust me,” she said, trying to remember everything that had happened that night when Gloria had escaped.
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
“Trust it is, I guess.” He let out a low grunt and she felt it somehow. He’d talked about the danger of punching holes in the fabric of reality, but ironically that was exactly how his transformation felt to her. She was maybe twenty feet away from him in total, but she could feel the wolf-shaped rip in the universe, dark and bright with a clear carnivore’s instinct, quite distinct from the dull, heavy weft of frustrated humanity.
Elated, she seized upon it; she had done something like this before when she had looked into wolf-Gloria and somehow separated the woman from the werewolf.
“There’s a tranq gun under the seat,” he said, but she wasn’t listening. Besides, she had no way to get it without letting a hungry werewolf out of the car, and good God, was he ever hungry. Gloria’s wolf had been gray-brown and well-fed, while Gabe’s was black, young and ravenous. This one had a full set of teeth and a bristling set of hackles and he was roaring under Gabe’s skin. She felt his claws against the inside of her ribs and Gabe’s scream told her that she was feeling what he was feeling.
Too much. She was out of her depth. She thought her head was going to explode with the pain, her hips tearing apart. Her spine – his spine – cracked audibly and her feet burned with sudden pins and needles before the sensation flared out, leaving them numb. When the feeling came back her knees were on backwards and her heels felt too close to her head.
Someone honked again behind her but she could barely see straight, let alone move. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Gabe writhing behind the truck windows, tearing off his clothes in some strange parody of car sex. She meant to find the place where his substance and that of the wolf intersected, where she could get a hold of the wolf and corral it like she had with Gloria, but somehow she’d just ended up under his skin along with it.
He was in there, but he was as crowded out as Charlie was in his own body, the wolf roaring and reasonless, crazed with pain and hunger. And now she was in there with him, poking around and making matters worse. I’m as bad as Yael, and I can’t get out.
The traffic behind her was growing frantic. She could feel their frustration swelling, a background noise she didn’t need, fumbling as she was in the tangle of Gabe and wolf. She opened the door and got out, prompting more yells and abuse from behind as she walked between the cars towards the truck.
There was no more Gabe in there. As she approached he sprang at the window, snarling and slobbering, his muzzle creased and his big teeth bared. Someone called her a moron, but she wasn’t listening. He had to be in there somewhere, and when she found him he knew he was going to be thinking what she was thinking; he had to get to the safety of Gloria’s basement. All she had to do was weed out his will and make it stronger than the wolf.
Easier said than done. His hunger blazed up so big and fierce that she felt her own mouth water. The black furry substance of the wolf was thrashing so hard that she couldn’t see where the line lay between him and Gabe, and she had to feel her way, her sense memory well honed to the touch of his skin.
She heard his voice in her head.
I’ve really fucked up this time.
- You haven’t, she thought back at him. Just hold still long enough for me to get the gun and knock you out.
Hold still? What part of hungry werewolf are you not getting?
It really was hi
m. Thank God, she wasn’t losing her mind and imagining all of this. Gabe sat back on his haunches on the driver’s seat. She could see the gun sticking out from the footwell. All he had to do was hold himself in check long enough for her to open the door, grab it, close the door again and fire through the gap in the window.
Hold him, she said, and she could feel him pulling on the wolf, like a man being dragged behind a large, powerful dog on a leash. The wolf smelled blood and howled in hunger, but then it must have got a whiff of something else. Of her. Ash and booze and blood. She heard him think – Gloria – only it wasn’t in words, being in wolf and all. He recognized her scent, clinging faintly to Blue’s clothes – that old lady mix of cigarettes and denture fixative and lavender gift soap that still floated around the house like Gloria’s ghost. And it was enough. Enough to make him recognize that he was in the presence of a wolf witch.
Her hand was on the door. She could hear heavy footsteps behind her but there was nothing she could do about it now; it was now or never. The wolf sat as still and as stiff as if he’d been the victim of a flyby taxidermist. Inside Gabe hung on, amazed.
None of us were ever alpha, were we? She was the alpha all along.
Blue opened the door, half expecting two hundred hairy pounds of muscle and teeth to leap out and tear her head off her shoulders, but the wolf didn’t move. She could feel him puzzling it out, wondering why he was smelling Gloria when Gloria wasn’t here. Her hands shook as she reached for the gun; it caught on something under the seat and she nearly panicked, but then it came loose and it was out, in her hands.
She stumbled backwards against someone and the wolf must have caught the scent of her anxiety; he curled his lip.
Blue slammed the door just as he sprung once more. Behind her was a large, bald, angry man.