Dark of Night

by T. F. Walsh

  Chapter Sixteen

  The back of Izzy’s head got very heavy. She felt she couldn’t hold it up. The tiny fracture she’d felt split the smooth bone beneath her forehead webbed out in a network of zigzagged lines. Her scalp prickled and her whole body went numb. Distantly, she thought, “This is what they mean by ‘cracking up.” Her ears rang. Curtis’s lips moved as he approached, but the shrill warning tone — an emergency broadcast — in her ears obliterated his words. She swung the fire poker at him in a limp and poorly aimed swoop, unable to focus. Everything blurred. He caught the weapon as Thomas had and held onto the rod with two hands while she shoved it against his chest, the noises coming from her somewhere between sobs and shrieks. He wouldn’t back off.

  “Get away from me!”

  “Izzy.” Curtis’s voice cut through the squealing whine. He pulled on the fire poker and braced her to himself before he extricated it from her feeble grasp and tossed it aside.

  “Fucking Werewolf.” She slapped his chest and shoulders. “Let go.” She twisted and shoved away from him.

  Curtis’s coffee-colored eyes pulsed amber. “Don’t jerk like that, Izzy.” He blinked and the wild incandescence faded. “I told you: Sudden movements provoke the hunter’s instinct.”

  Those strange eyes — eyes that had haunted every nightmare — framed in his familiar face pitched the room at an odd angle. She’d trusted him. Trusted him. Izzy’s legs buckled and she stumbled back, catching herself on the wall as Curtis rushed to catch her. Flinging her arm at him, she staggered into the hall.

  “Izzy, you’re going to fall.” Curtis went for her again. “Don’t — ”

  Izzy shot down the corridor on rubbery legs and Curtis snarled behind her. His arms ensnared her and he slammed her, face forward, against the wall, his body hard on hers. Lips brushed her throat.

  “Don’t run.” His voice rasped with a rattling growl and his muscles twitched and jumped. Shuddering, he combated the change threatening his body. Izzy felt the creature inside him ripple and stir beneath his skin as it fought for freedom. When he thrashed with it and growled again she kicked back and brought her heel between his legs, connecting with a bare and very sensitive spot. Howling, he dropped her and doubled over. She streaked into his bedroom, slamming the door just as he righted himself and gave chase.

  Pounding shook the wall and Izzy retreated from the door. Her boot splashed in a puddle. She glanced over her shoulder and grimaced. Nook had peed. She shook the piss off her boot and skirted the mess. Emptying Curtis’s dresser of clothes, she shoved the furniture against the door.

  “Izzy,” Curtis shouted through the barrier. “Will you listen to me?”

  Izzy knew if he wanted in, her fortifications wouldn’t stop him, but she had to make some effort to appease herself and he respected the extra walls she’d erected. She hugged herself and stared at the dresser-bolted door, absently fretting at the end of her stunted arm.

  “Why aren’t I a Werewolf?” she asked.

  “What?” Curtis spoke around labored breaths.

  Izzy swallowed. “If a Werewolf bit me, how come I haven’t turned into one?”

  “Doesn’t work that way.”

  “Enlighten me.” She had to keep him talking, distracted, while she figured something out.

  Curtis sighed. “Being a wolf isn’t viral. Or genetic. A spirit makes us change.”

  “You’re possessed?”

  “I suppose. Some wolf spirits pick humans or wolves at random. Some stay with a family. Like mine. Sees-Through-Clear-Skies was my dad’s wolf before he passed to me.”

  While he spoke, Izzy checked the windows. She could get them open, but Curtis, wolf or not, would hear it. She sucked on her upper lip and spun around. The noxious puddle in the middle of the room made her gag.

  “Werewolves make a habit of eating people?” she asked once her stomach settled. That puddle had to come up.

  “When they go sick they do.”

  “So, you get the flu and I’m dog food. Fantastic.” Izzy’s mind rebelled at this talk of spirits and wolves and shape-shifting men. Reason had taken a sound beating and languished, bruised and bloodied, in the far corner of her brain. The cracked shell housing her psyche teetered on the verge of total collapse, but rationalizing the improbable away wouldn’t keep things together. She’d witnessed three men change from human to beast or vice versa. She wasn’t on drugs and was mentally sound besides the odd fit of anxiety or depression. Still, she couldn’t discuss wolf spirits with a naked man shouting outside her door without a surge of hysterical giggles tickling up from belly to throat. She suppressed those giggles.

  The mind knows when it’s ready.

  Well, hers wasn’t and if she didn’t get some normalcy soon she didn’t think her sanity would stand up to Werewolves, sick or healthy. Curtis had been lecturing all the while she mentally grounded herself and she’d missed the first part of his speech.

  “ — so we don’t get sick like that. When a wolf snaps it’s because the change got to him. Happens to pure wolves mostly.”

  “And they are?” Izzy crossed to the bathroom and snagged a damp towel hanging from the metal rack next to the toilet. A small, frosted window a few feet above the tank caught her eye. She judged the fit. She could get through it.

  “Wolves that turn human. As opposed to a human turned wolf,” Curtis said.

  Izzy stopped short on her way to the puddle. “Oh my fucking God, you’re not a reverse Werewolf are you?”

  “No, I’m not pure. Would it have mattered if I was?”

  “Would it matter to you if I’d been born a man?” Izzy asked as she knelt. With the towel, she sopped up Nook’s mess. The husky poked his nose and paws out from under the bed.

  “Fair enough. Can I come in?” Curtis asked.

  “No.”

  “Izzy, I’m fine now. I got stirred up from chasing Rapid and Thomas’s posturing crap and when you ran from me I couldn’t help it. It won’t happen again.”

  “At the moment I’m fresh out of trust.”

  “My balls are already busted. How many times are you going to kick?”

  “I don’t know. How many times have you lied to me?”

  Curtis’s punch shook the dresser at the door and his solitary framed picture jumped from its hook on the wall. The photo of Curtis’s parents clattered on the floor and a crack split the glass. “Fucking, fuck! Fuck, Izzy!” Nook’s nose and paws vanished under the bed skirt. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” More pounding and crashing and a stream of curses that escalated in virulence and complexity punctuated his tirade as Curtis moved back to the living room. Sounded like he’d need new chairs. And plates. Didn’t sound like his anger would fizzle for a while. That suited Izzy’s plan fine.

  Carting the yellowed towel into the bathroom, Izzy sat it on the toilet seat while she climbed onto the tank. Stuck with ice, the little window took some jostling before it cracked open. She wedged her fingers into the space and shoved the pane the rest of the way up. Grabbing the fouled terrycloth, she pitched it into the snow, banked high at the back of the cabin. Lucky for her, the window was low enough for her to wriggle through. If she’d had to lift herself she would have been screwed.

  Left hand braced on the rough exterior timbers, Izzy shoved herself through the narrow opening head first. Front half hanging out of the cabin, she grunted at the window ledge biting into her stomach. She edged down the back wall. When her feet left the toilet tank, her unsupported rear weight pitched her off balance and she tumbled face first into a snow bank. She didn’t fall far and was cold and uncomfortable more than anything else. Her legs and forearms were scraped from their brush with the wall and window. Bruises and abrasions. Nothing a Band-Aid couldn’t fix. First, she had to get to a phone.

  With Thomas and Gerome tracking and Curtis raging
in his living room, she should be able to get to the main building and call the cops. Her cell had probably been crushed. No telling what Curtis had done to her duffel. She circled around the cabin and took off across the lawn, hugging the shadowed tree line so Curtis wouldn’t spot her from his front window. Snow came up to her calves in some areas and she had to high step through the drifts. Her legs cramped up and slush clogged her boots and soaked her pajama bottoms. After she lost feeling in her frostbitten toes she couldn’t decide if she should be grateful or really, really worried.

  The wolf that clipped Izzy’s side was all but invisible until it hit her. It shot from the trees and threw its weight into her, knocking her down. It tossed back its head and howled. Izzy flipped over and kicked it in the chest. Her powerful dancer’s legs choked off what was undoubtedly a warning signal and toppled the beast. She scrambled up and made for the road, but the wolf flanked her before she got far. Hip-checked again, she face planted in the snow. Icy powder stuffed her nostrils and filled her mouth. With its front paws on her back, the wolf’s weight kept her flat as it howled once more.

  • • •

  The remnants of the card table flew across the room and crashed into the toppled flat screen. Fuck tables and TVs. Who needed them? Not Curtis. Wolves needed nothing but the ground under their paws, the wind through their fur, a dry hole in rough weather, and meat in their bellies when they growled. An unbroken coffee mug rolled and knocked his foot. He kicked it and the ceramic shattered. Great, now all his tableware matched. He surveyed the wreckage of his living room and felt triumphant. The contents of his cupboards covered the kitchen floor in a broken jumble. Dents studded the drywall from his bedroom to the end of the hall. He’d made those. With his fists. And he’d make more if he felt like it.

  Flexing his fingers, Curtis studied his bloodied knuckles. Tiny licks of blue flame curled from the shallow gashes and remade the flesh. Clear-Skies surged through his veins and his ears filled with the ringing rush of crashing waves. He felt shrink- wrapped in his skin and swelling pressure pushed against his skull and the backs of his eyeballs like his body was one big, puffy wound. When he opened his mouth he didn’t bellow, he roared. Clear-Skies bucked under his skin. Why not let the wolf take control? He’d lost her. Even if he shielded Izzy from the worst of Thomas’s cruelty, she’d rejected him. Them.

  So what if he’d lied? He’d done it to protect her. She should be grateful. He’d given her food, shelter, protection. He’d had her body. She was his. His. What was truth anyway but a human construction and what was a human construction to someone more than human? There was no truth, only honesty and all he’d shown her of himself was honest. A wolf had no need for truth and lies. A wolf obeyed only instinct.

  Curtis’s insides twisted like a wrung cloth and he fell to all fours. Shifting perspective disoriented him a passing moment and he shook out the itching fur that sprouted from his skin. Snorting, he pawed at the floor and swung his head in the bedroom’s direction. She couldn’t shut him out that way. One kick of his hind leg and he’d splinter the bedroom door. When he was over her, she’d be his again and she’d want him. He panted and his balls drew up between his hindquarters. She wouldn’t care what he was when he buried himself in her.

  No! Curtis shouted inside himself, but he was so small in the cage of his body. Clear-Skies howled all around him and another wolf’s song joined his internal baying.

  Escaped, the she-wolf sang. Escaped and captured.

  Curtis snarled and hurtled toward the front door, tongue lolling from his jaws, tasting wolf and woman and the citrus tinge of fear on the air. Using his head as a battering ram, he flattened his ears and bashed open the door, hearing metal snap and wood splinter. Skidding onto the porch, he spotted the black silhouette of Nettled-Clover perched atop his flown charge. He bared his fangs and flung himself over the front steps and into the snow.

  Curtis would get Izzy back. He had to.

  • • •

  Sharp barks made Izzy’s guard back off and she sat up, spitting out snow and wiping it from her eyes. The silver wolf — Curtis — sat in front of her and growled. In this form, he appeared as Gerome had: an unnaturally massive, but standard wolf on four legs. The huge, two-legged version she’d seen in the cabin must have been a special occasion thing, reserved for when they gobbled up helpless victims. He huffed at the second wolf, the one that had ruined everything, behind her. Smaller than the others and sleeker, its russet coat stood out from the silver and black speckled grays of its pack mates. At Curtis’s chuffing command, she supposed, the red wolf lowered its head, stalked back into the trees, and vanished.

  Circling Izzy, Curtis butted her back with his head. He wanted her in the cabin, but fuck if she’d go trooping back to her prison. If he wanted her he’d have to drag her.

  He had no problems with that.

  Bounding in front of her, Curtis latched onto the flannel and pulled, his head low to the ground and butt high in the air. He towed her about a foot before the flannel gave out between her flailing and his teeth. Fabric ripped and she fell back in the cushion of snow, chest bared when the shirt flapped open. She cinched the garment closed and sat up, brushing her hair out of her face with a toss of her head. Curtis shook himself and went for her again. Abandoning the flannel, she shoved at his muzzle. He ducked her hand, danced back, and his mouth closed around her left arm. She froze.

  Wolves didn’t have hands. Curtis had grabbed her the single way he could, but Izzy didn’t care. She panicked and yanked her arm from his mouth. Though he hadn’t bit her, the sudden jerk raked his teeth over her flesh and he drew blood. She pulled her arm into her chest and hunched over it, glaring at him.

  “If everything went the way you planned I wouldn’t know about any of this, would I? Would you ever have told me? I guess it doesn’t matter since I’ll be dead by Sunday. Convenient for you.”

  Curtis’s hackles rose and he barked several times before hunkering down and changing. The shift took a minute. Izzy didn’t bother with escape. She couldn’t see the red wolf, but she knew it watched from wherever it hid. Splayed on his back in the snow, Curtis cracked his stiff joints, stretched, and sat up. Hunching into a ball, his nose wrinkled and he gave a human growl of discomfort.

  “You’re not going to die,” he said through his teeth. “Rapid is. The pack will protect you.”

  “And what about when your sick wolf is dead?” Izzy’s teeth chattered and she shivered. Her clothes were soaked and the material glittered with a thin sheen of frost. “Keeping me alive might be your plan, but what about Thomas’s? Do you think he’ll kill me or will he make you do it?”

  Curtis flinched like she’d hit him and he grabbed her. “You’re not going to die. I’ve gone against Thomas before. If it comes to that, I’ll do it again.” He didn’t sound sure.

  “You couldn’t fight him in the cabin.” Izzy didn’t want him close right now, but he was so warm and she was so cold.

  “I was pissed off. The Alpha’s power affects behavior. He can command me to stop treating you like my mate. He can’t make me stop loving you.”

  He said it so casually Izzy wondered if he realized he’d said it. She sagged into his arms and let him lift her. Together, they returned to the cabin.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The living room was a disaster. Not a huge change since Rapid’s attack, but now glass shards crunched underfoot and the folding chairs twisted in a modern art heap. On its side, the standing lamp cast its light across the floor and the undersides of the ruined furniture. Izzy had stepped into an old-fashioned horror show. Any moment the monster would lurch from the shadows and wrap its claws around her throat. Except the monster walked behind her and he’d been one of the best things to come along in her life in a good long while. She kept ahead of Curtis as he trailed her into his bedroom.

  She mused that he might have some trouble with the
door, or at least pretend to, but he twisted the knob this way and that and the lock clicked back.

  “Was never very secure,” Curtis said and pushed the door open. The dresser gave him negligible resistance, groaning over the wood when he shoved it out of the way. Izzy jumped when it tipped over and crashed to the floor.

  Hurrying to the opposite side of the room, Izzy pressed herself into a corner and eyeballed Curtis, who picked through the mountain of jeans, socks, and T-shirts she’d emptied from the dresser. He found a pair of boxers and tugged them on before stepping into some jeans. Seeing him perform these mundane tasks after observing the change unnerved her. Something so abnormal had no right disguising itself in Fruit of the Loom and Wranglers. His nose wrinkled and he sniffed, made a face.

  “Ah, Nook.” Curtis frowned at the spot where the puddle had been. Scratching the back of his neck, he glanced at Izzy and his expression communicated that he had a great deal to say, but didn’t. Wise of him. Anything that came out of his mouth would be lost on her. Door locks and dressers he easily bypassed. Emotional barriers didn’t cave to brute strength and Izzy’s were three feet of iron and steel smelted over decades of fierce competition in SAB classes, the NYCB corps and years of trauma recovery. Her shields were impenetrable and she’d been an idiot to drop them for him.

  Curtis left the bedroom to her, but Izzy didn’t move from the corner. Walls at her back felt safe. She listened to his movement through the cabin; scrapes of metal on wood, the chink of swept glass. Satisfied she’d be on her own for at least the rest of the night, she inched from her safe spot, begrudgingly threw on some of Curtis’s dry clothes, and headed for the bathroom.

  A stack of soap, extra TP, and cleaning chemicals crowded the cabinet under the sink. Izzy grabbed a white spray bottle of all-purpose cleaner and found a ratty pile of rags next to the snaking pipes. She might have sopped up Nook’s pee, but the floor was still nasty. No way in hell she could sleep with pee residue haunting her, if sleep were an option at all.