by Anna Roberts
“Listen,” he said. “If this next full moon goes bad for me –”
“ – no –”
“ – don’t fuck around, Gabe. I don’t want to end up like Reese. Or Joe. And I need to count on you.”
Gabe was about to say ‘why me?’ but then he thought better of it. He knew why. Because Eli was scared and knew he’d hesitate. Couldn’t ask Charlie. Charlie would actually do it.
“Thanks,” said Gabe, trying and failing not to sound as bitter as he felt.
“Don’t be like that. I wish it could be different, but it’s not.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“I won’t,” said Eli, with the clearest thing to certainty Gabe had ever heard from him. “The last time I went to the bathroom it came out looking like Coca Cola, and that was over twelve hours ago.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Go to the hospital. They have antibiotics for that.”
He shook his head. “No, they don’t, Gabe. It’s not just my kidneys. It’s everything. Everything is fucked and falling apart, and I know why.”
“Why?”
“It’s him,” said Eli. “Axl. Nature’s done with me. I passed down the genes; we’re not much more complicated than fruit flies like that. Ever since he hit werewolf puberty I’ve been going downhill.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“I’m not.” Eli gave a rueful grin. “It’s the circle of life. You of all people should know that.”
You gave up, Gabe thought. You just rolled over, stuck your paws in the air and played dead. Not me. Not when my time comes. I’m going out the same way I came in – bloody and screaming.
A girl’s laugh floated on the breeze, and a boy’s voice – “...give it back, you tard...” Teenagers.
“Promise me you’ll look out for him,” said Eli.
“You’re not dead yet, you bum.”
“You know what I mean. I can’t reach him.”
“He’s fifteen, Eli.”
“I wish I’d done better. Done it sooner. Maybe if he knew me better he’d talk to me.”
Gabe shook his head. “No. He wouldn’t. They don’t let anyone in at that age.” He stared up at the moon, a remote lump of regolith. How did it manage to cause so much chaos? “I remember when my grandfather died. I was seventeen. Gloria came into my room and told me, and I didn’t know what to say. It was weird; I thought I was going to laugh, but I didn’t. And I said ‘thank you’. I don’t know why – it just seemed like the thing to say because I knew it must have been hard for her. And I was grateful for her telling me, but I knew it was wrong, somehow. Not appropriate.”
“I remember,” said Eli. “You were so young.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I was. And then I called Joe and said I’d meet him just like we’d arranged. Like nothing had happened. And Joe asked me how Harry was doing and I was just like ‘Oh, yeah – he died’, just like that. That cold. Because I was too young to know how to deal with it, I guess. I went out with Joe and got high as shit, like nothing had happened. That’s just how kids are. Weird, hard little things. They see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear.”
Eli swallowed hard. “I don’t know that he can afford that attitude.”
“Don’t worry,” said Gabe. “He won’t keep it long. Reality has a way of making you deal.”
17
Charlie’s hands had stopped shaking and he’d gone back to beer. Outside Gabe and Eli were talking in low, urgent voices, and Blue had no idea what to do or say. All of her growing confidence looked like the worst kind of foolishness in retrospect, dumber even than poor, silly Ruby, who thought you could somehow harness a creature like Yael without getting your head bitten clean off.
“Sooner or later,” she said. “We’re going to have to talk about what happened back there.”
Charlie narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. I got that.”
“So?”
“So?”
“You want to...start?”
He gave her a wry, lopsided smile and once again she was weirdly reminded of the face in her dreams. “I don’t know if you noticed,” he said. “But I was never one for therapy.”
“This isn’t therapy,” she said. “This could be important.”
Charlie frowned, like he was trying to figure out why she was so familiar to him. She recognized the expression; she’d felt it on her own face often enough. “Okay,” he said. “This is going to sound fucked up.”
“Yeah. Me and fucked-up are getting real friendly lately.”
“Right,” he said. He took a sip of his beer. “That thing knew me.”
“Who? Yael?”
Charlie nodded. “Yeah. It...wanted me. And I think it’s wanted me for a very long time.”
She thought so too, but there was no point in telling him that now. So she pressed instead. “How so?”
“I had these dreams,” he said. “Ever since I can remember. It’d be like I was outside myself, if that makes any sense. Like I was looking down at myself like I’m another person.”
“Okay.”
“I’m always the same age,” said Charlie. “Maybe two or even younger. And I’m looking down at myself in my crib.”
“Right.”
“And I want,” said Charlie. “It’s like the most intense want you ever felt in your life. I want this kid.”
Her feelings must have showed on her face, because Charlie started talking faster.
“No, it’s not like that,” he said. “Although there was a time when I was really fucking worried I was some kind of child molester, even though it didn’t make sense. It was never a sexual want. It was more like...I don’t know. Envy, you know?”
“No.”
“No, listen,” he said, excited now. “It makes sense now. I get it. You said Yael was leaking somehow, like bits of his mind could escape and get into your head, especially when Gloria was asleep –”
“ - and you think that this dream was actually a look into Yael’s mind?”
“Yes. Exactly. It makes perfect sense. This weird want that never made sense before. The feeling in the dream wasn’t me wanting me; it was Yael wanting me. And now I know just how he wanted me. Why it didn’t feel like a sexual want. He wanted me like that bony-ass Sex And The City broad wants a pair of fancy shoes that’ll make her feet hurt. That motherfucker wanted to wear me.”
“You’re right,” said Blue, unable to quite believe it. “That does make sense.”
“It does?”
“Yeah. In the way everything else around here makes sense, what with exorcising angry spirits from werewolves and everything. In a way I’m kind of scared about how fast it’s becoming the new normal.” She sloshed the ice around in the dregs of her coke and once again wondered why Charlie gave her such a strong sense of deja vu. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“You have any relatives in New Orleans? I know you said you’d been there...”
Charlie shook his head. “Nah. Just passing through. I’m Florida Man - born and bred. Why?”
“No, it’s weird,” said Blue. “But since weird isn’t going away any time soon...I’m sure I know you from somewhere.”
He mugged into his beer. “You’re twentysomething, right?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Yeah, no – you’re fine. I wasn’t that sexually precocious.”
She laughed, in spite of everything. “How do you know I don’t know who my father is?”
“I dunno. You just have that look about you, I guess. A little lost, a little too eager to please. I see it a lot on strippers and...” He trailed off at the look on her face. “Is this train of thought coming off as skeevy?”
“Incredibly.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m used to saying what I think.”
But there was something there. She couldn’t deny that she’d thought about her unknown dad. Not to the point where she invented those kind of fantasies that one day he’d swoop in, make Reggie take
her meds and make everything perfect, but it was hard not to see her own blue eyes in the mirror and not be curious.
That man. That face in the mirror, and her mom in black satin, calling him baby.
“I see this white guy in my dreams,” she said. “Black hair, a Ninth Ward accent that doesn’t sound quite real. And blue eyes – perfect blue, like the sea. Like yours. Maybe that’s why you remind me of someone. Maybe I’m filling in the gaps, but you look so much like him.”
Charlie frowned. “Did he wear alligator boots?”
“And a blood red shirt, yeah. Why? Does he sound familiar to you?”
“Was his name West Lafayette?”
Blue stared at him. “I thought it was a place,” she said. “I kept seeing it in my dreams, written –”
“ – in blood, on a wall,” said Charlie. “In Lyle’s house. Yeah, I know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, neither do I. I don’t know why you were seeing him.”
“But you do, obviously,” she said. “Who is he, Charlie?”
“Was,” said Charlie. “He was my dad.”
*
Grayson kept falling asleep.
The pain in his knee was like a background roar now, like the ocean or the static on a TV jammed between channels. Eventually, he knew, it would cease to matter. And eventually he knew he wouldn’t wake up from one of these naps.
A little part of him – okay, a large part – was at peace with that.
His body was fighting to preserve every last scrap of energy before the full moon, a moon he was sure he wouldn’t survive. The only thing he really regretted now was that he wouldn’t see Joe again. Wouldn’t get to tell him how sorry he was for being such a coward.
The neglected kitchen was huge and ugly, the marble counter tops littered with empty KFC buckets and pizza boxes. Jared and Ro were hungry all the time, but nobody cared to clean up and Grayson was too sick to do it. They fed him and he tried not to eat, knowing his body would only try to use the calories to change, but it was impossible to resist when the moon was so close to full. He ate anyway, snarfing down flavorless Big Macs and bad pizza and various fried things dripping with disgusting American cheese. He wished his body would stop trying to stay alive; it would have made things considerably easier.
Grayson lay on a stained mattress opposite the kitchen door. The Art Deco glass had been smashed and the pane replaced by a piece of old fiber-board Ro had found in the garage. Somewhere on the other side of the kitchen island Jared was ‘cleaning’, which meant he was knocking old take-out cartons into a black plastic rubbish sack and complaining mightily about doing so.
“...coulda got some Guatemalan chick to do this. Or a Cuban – fuckin’ illegals. They don’t ask questions...”
Jared’s voice drifted in and out. Grayson closed his eyes again.
“...fancy house and no cleaner...”
Sleep. Maybe this was the big one. He hoped so.
“...fuckin’ bullshit...”
He smelled salt, and something so alien to Florida that he knew he was dreaming. Frost. The pain blurred into the soothing, shhing sound of the sea on shingle, millions of pebbles being drawn back and forth under the shallow, icy waves. Home. He saw his breath freeze in the air and when he looked up the sky was a cold, crisp blue, with windblown clouds in shades of gray and white. The wind whipped against his cheek – perfect weather for kites. And there was one now – a big diamond thing in shades of blue, pink and purple, looping a little awkwardly as it struggled to catch the wind. He felt his heart race faster at the thought of it crashing to earth, but then someone pulled on the strings in just the right way and it was up, up, up. Flying. Lovely.
“Is this heaven?” he asked, and knew it wasn’t real, because Joe was there beside him and Joe had never been to this beach, thousands of miles and an ocean away.
Joe looked straight up, his dirty blond hair tousled by the wind, his lips slightly parted as if he were tasting the icy tang in the air. Something he missed. “Not yet,” he said.
Grayson wanted to say that he was sorry, but he was sorry for even wanting to say sorry, for thinking something as little as ‘sorry’ could fix the scale of his terrible fuck-up. If he had only just stayed he wouldn’t be dying alone on a dirty mattress like this...
Something went crash, jolting him awake. Jared had dropped the garbage bag on the floor, just a foot from Grayson’s face.
“...what in fuck was that now?” Jared stomped towards the door. “Ro? That you?”
For the first time in a long time Grayson fought to stay awake. He knew what was going to happen. This was what you got when you opened the door on the dark and you’d failed to remember that the last person to do this had been reduced to a severed hand and a bloody smear on the dirt. The conventions of fiction could be as bloodthirsty as Aztec Gods.
Only this wasn’t fiction. Was it?
“Ro, you asshole...”
Grayson held his breath. He found himself mentally counting down – and in five, four, three, two – and right on cue a big, blond shape came flying out of the dark.
It crossed the doorway in one bound, removing Jared from the picture with a solid, fleshy thud. Jared didn’t even have time to scream, and when he remembered to do so the sound was cut off with a hot, crunchy gurgle.
Grayson laughed, or at least he thought he was laughing. He couldn’t be sure. His body was shaking against the mattress and he was making a noise, but salt water kept running into his mouth. He heard smacking, slurping noises from the darkness just to the left of the open door, then he guessed he must have passed out.
When he opened his eyes again the wolf was standing right there in the door.
Dear God, he was fucking huge.
Long legs, paws like side plates, a big barrel chest and massive shoulders. His muzzle was red almost up to the eyeballs and there were dark beads of blood clotting in his dishwater-blond pelt like the rubies in the Tower of London. He padded forward on rough velvet feet, licking his lips and his big, pinkish teeth. His tongue made a wet, satisfied sound, almost like a lover’s in a darkened room, and Grayson found himself reaching out.
“Come on,” he said, and it was barely a breath, but it was still enough to make Joe’s tufted ears twitch and swivel.
Joe seemed to hesitate for a moment, an animal sensibly afraid of man, but then moved closer, bringing with him the smell of wild things and Jared’s spattered gore. So big. So beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” said Grayson, his fingers stretching out in front of him. He wanted to touch. That blood bejeweled fur looked so soft. This was death, and he wanted to reach out and touch it.
“I’m so sorry, darling,” he said, and he knew this time he was crying, partly with gratitude and partly with fear. He felt fur under his hand and it was even softer than he could have imagined, soft like the low growl rumbling through Joe’s massive throat.
It was coming. He smiled.
*
“I was just shy of nineteen,” said Charlie. “Two thousand and one – remember it well. Whole state of Florida was just one big recount joke. I’d been off looking for my uncle, exactly like Gloria had told me not to, but you know that story.”
“Yeah.”
“Lyle was a big noise back in those days. He wasn’t like other werewolves; most of us spend our lives bust-ass broke, since we’re pretty much doomed from the get-go. If it kicks in round puberty – and it usually does – then you can forget about a GED, never mind college. Attendance alone is gonna let you down. But Lyle was born on third base. His old man owned a bunch of land. Drained it, turned it into golf courses and made a fortune charging crusty-ass tourists to smack balls around on it. Lyle was the only kid; he inherited the lot. Nice work if you can get it, right?
“He had the big house, the skinny blonde wife and the heir apparent – Reese. He must have been about four at the time, and already the little prince of the castle.” He stopped, as if gauging her reaction. “Hate
to speak ill of the dead, but they bought that kid up with two silver spoons in his goddamn mouth. He would never have cut it as the alpha, not up there in swamp country.”
“What’s the deal with that?” said Blue. “Swamp wolves. I’ve heard people talking about them like they’re monsters.”
“Well, yeah. A little. I mean, I guess they do eat people.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that. He’d be offended if she pointed out that he would also probably eat people at the wrong phase of the moon. “Okay,” she said, pretending a tolerance that she didn’t feel.
Charlie raised an eyebrow. “I mean when they’re not wolves,” he said. “They do it on purpose.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded and took another drink. “It’s the circle of life to them. Recycling. Why toss grandma out when she’s packed full of protein?”
“Goddamn.”
He shrugged. “I guess if you look at it logically it makes sense, although it’s hard to look logically at a thing like cannibalism. It’s just one of the many ways they stay off the grid; there are swamp wolves who get born, live their whole lives and get eaten by their kids without so much as appearing on a census. They’ve pretty much perfected the art of flying under the radar.”
Blue shivered, picturing pale, feral people with muddy, blank-looking faces and hard narrow eyes.
“The heart is their favorite,” said Charlie. “They say they always eat the heart first, or that the heart goes to the eldest son. I’m not sure exactly how it goes, but I’m guessing it’s either a mark of respect or a show of just how goddamn metal you are. Whatever it is, if you got swamp wolves on your turf you’d better be prepared for some heart-munching action, because that’s just how they roll. They usually eat their own, but they’re not totally against taking a bite out of strangers from time to time.
“If you’re dealing with swamp wolves, sometimes you have to speak their language. Chomp on a couple of hearts of your own. Lyle had always had problems with them; he looked down on ‘em. Never even tried to respect them, and blamed them when things went wrong. When I first met Lyle he said ‘You don’t wanna join us, kid. We got swamp wolf problems, and I don’t think they’re going away any time soon.’”