by Lauren Esker
His Prius was parked a little ways up the street. Nicole slid into the passenger seat, stretched out her legs, and toed off her pumps with a relieved sigh. "I hate wearing shoes," she explained, in answer to Avery's curious glance. "I'd go barefoot all the time if I could. In fact, at home, I usually did. It's a little harder when you're working in an office—and living in a climate where the ground is pretty cold and wet a lot of the year."
"You have cute feet," Avery said. "You can go barefoot around me anytime."
Nicole wiggled her toes. "I don't think anyone's ever complimented my feet before."
They stopped to pick up sandwiches from a carry-out place. Avery ate one-handed, and Nicole unwrapped her turkey on wheat as they drove north from the city.
When Nicole first moved to Seattle, Erin and Tim had taken her to see all the local sights, wanting to show her the beauty of her new home. Trips to the Cascades had been part of it. She remembered a broad highway going east, rising up into the mountains; a deep canyon where the highway split down both sides; towering, pine-covered slopes.
This time, they drove north toward Everett for a while, and then turned off onto a country highway. The freeway sprawl fell away, leaving them in rural farmland. Avery drove past orchards and small farms and patches of forest marching over rolling hills. At this time of year, bright golds and reds were scattered among the dark pines; the fields were golden and stubbly. Farmstand signs advertised apples, pumpkins, and cherries. The dark rampart of the mountains reared to the east.
"This is pretty," Nicole said.
"It must be different from where you grew up." Avery had the window down, his arm hanging out, although she found the breeze swirling into the car chilly enough that she wasn't sure how he could stand it.
"Well, the Brisbane area is all white-sand beaches and surfers, so ... yeah. Although the Olympic Peninsula is actually not as different as I was expecting. We have rainforests near where I grew up, too." It had surprised her, in fact, when her sister and Tim had taken her hiking in the national park across Puget Sound from Seattle, how much the ferns and moss-draped rocks had reminded her of the hikes she'd gone on with her family as a child. It was cooler and everything smelled different, but nostalgia had hit her hard.
"But mostly it's the little things that get to me," she added. "Different brands in the stores, that kind of thing."
"Do you miss it?"
"Sometimes," she admitted honestly. "But I'm not really prone to wallowing in memories of my childhood. It's mostly my family I miss, and I have some of them here with me, so I'm not doing too badly there."
Avery's expression was hooded, and she remembered too late the issues that he had surrounding family and "pack". She floundered for a change of topic, but he got there first. "So beaches and surfers and rainforest, huh? When I think of Australia, I guess, I think of deserts."
"We were on the rainy coast. Australia's a whole continent, you know. It's diverse."
"From what I hear, all the wildlife is out to get you. True?"
She smiled and tucked her bare foot under her on the seat, relieved to feel the brief tension between them relaxing again. "Depends on what you mean. We don't have very many large animals, nothing like the States. No bears or buffalo. On the other hand, we have most of the world's deadliest spiders, so things balance out."
"I'm not sure if I'd rather fight a bear or a poisonous spider," Avery said. "Do I get Jack on my team?"
"Sure. But spiders can take you out before you even see them." Schooling her face to perfect immobility, she added, "But the worst, the ones you really have to watch out for, are the drop bears."
"I thought you said you don't have bears."
Nicole shook her head. "No, it's a marsupial, the biggest marsupial predator on the continent. Tasmanian devils are a lot better known, but drop bears don't encounter humans as often because they live in heavily forested areas, and we don't have a lot of those. They live in the treetops and wait for their prey to walk under, and then they drop on you. Hence the name."
Avery eyed her. He looked suspicious. "What do they look like?"
"Big and furry. Well, like a small bear, basically. They hang from branches—like so." She demonstrated, tipping back and curving her arms around an imaginary branch. "Of course, I've only ever seen them in zoos."
"And they drop on you."
"Yes, that's the worst part, because they're very stealthy and good at hiding, and you never see or hear them coming. Just, bam, out of the blue, drop bear on your head. And they're vicious. Long fangs, nasty claws. Lots of people have scars from it."
"Lots of people? I thought you said people don't encounter them much."
"Bushwhackers and other outdoor types," she amended. "Of course, there are things you can do to protect yourself."
"Wear a hat with spikes on it?"
"They say you can deter them by putting Vegemite behind your ears." Now she was having to struggle with choked laughter. "That's why ... we eat so much of the stuff. It's terrible. No one would touch it otherwise."
"Drop bears," Avery muttered. He pulled out his phone and did a quick search, one-handed, while driving.
"I think that's illegal," Nicole pointed out.
"I don't care. Ha! I knew it. Urban legend. Based on ... koalas?"
Nicole dissolved in helpless giggles. "That's why it's my favorite," she said, through gasps of laughter.
"That's just not right." He grinned. "You can drop on my head anytime, though."
This made her imagine Avery in her sister's potted eucalyptus grove—falling on him out of the branches ... oh dear.
"But really," she said, sobering, "koalas can be vicious, you know."
"Yes, you were terribly vicious when you were cuddling with me and the pups last night."
"They still have teeth and claws. Take it from me, you don't want to tangle with a koala. Or make one angry."
"I'll keep that in mind if we ever have a fight."
"Do I get to ask questions now?" she said playfully.
"Sure. Go for it."
"You and Jack. I'm sure there's a story there. Did you just meet at the SCB, or does it go back farther than that?"
His eyebrows went up. "Wow. Okay, there's a can of worms. You sure you're ready for this?"
Nicole giggled. "It's not awful, is it?" She was expecting a disgusting frat-house story, or some tale of drunken twenty-something-guy shenanigans at a bar.
Instead, Avery's demeanor grew distant. "The day I met Jack was also the day I almost died in Afghanistan." He took his hand off the wheel to indicate his leg. "It's how I got this."
"Oh." She put a hand over her mouth. "Avery, God, I'm sorry. Just—stuff a cork in me sometimes. You don't have to talk about it."
"No, I think I want to. I don't mind telling the story. Not anymore. And meeting Jack was a good thing—a very good thing. He saved my life."
"How?" she asked quietly.
"Okay, so at the time, I was in the Army—regular Army, just a private, served one tour that, well ... you're about to hear the story of how it ended. Jack wasn't Army then, although he did a stint way back. He was working for a private security company, a Blackwater-like place. You know what I'm talking about? There were a lot of them overseas at the time. They did security-guard work on civilian installations and supply convoys, even on military bases in some areas. And sometimes they fought. Jack says he was a mercenary. I think it's actually a little more nuanced than that, but he did see combat, I know. And not from the same perspective I did. From what I understand, he was really good at it."
Nicole thought about the man she'd met at Avery's apartment, powerfully muscled and yet graceful, a man who had a sure and self-possessed confidence that spoke of the ability to handle himself in whatever situation he got into. "I can see that."
"Yeah, somehow people never seem shocked when Jack mentions he used to be a merc. Especially if they've seen him in the field. Anyway, on the day I met him, Jack was with a group of guys
guarding a convoy of fuel trucks. They came under fire and called my unit to pull them out. The security companies didn't have the resources we did, and when they got in over their heads, they'd holler for Uncle Sam to come pull them out with Black Hawks and heavy arms."
"I can imagine how popular that made them."
Avery's laugh was bleak. "Yeah. Especially when we lost guys doing it. Which we did. That day especially."
He went quiet for a moment, looking not at the road, but into another place and time.
"I still can't say exactly what happened to me," he said at last. "The whole thing is a blur, now. Heat and fire and things blowing up. Jack says I was standing close to a tanker truck that blew. All I know is, I got thrown hard enough to shatter my hip and leg, and shrapnel tore me apart from the chest down. If I'd been a regular human, I wouldn't even have lived long enough to know anything hit me."
"Shifter healing," Nicole murmured.
"Yeah. For me, like I said, it's a blur. I don't even remember pain, really. I just remember being cold, like I was going to freeze to death, and this guy I'd never seen before was holding me and trying to stop the bleeding and telling me I was going to be all right. He was soaked head to foot in blood—my blood, I realized later, but I thought he was hurt too. And still he kept telling me I'd be okay, and it was his fault and he was sorry. You know what I remember most about all of that, the thing that's clearest in my head?"
"What?" she asked quietly.
"That he was crying. I don't even think he knew it. He blamed himself, you see. My unit got ripped apart, all these guys dying, young guys, eighteen and nineteen. Not even old enough to drink, most of them. Young guys a couple months into their first tour in country. And Jack was older, and he'd been around a lot, and he kind of saw himself as—I don't even know, as the person who should be able to do something about it, except he couldn't. A lot of his friends got killed that day too. I think he looked around at what had happened, at my unit getting massacred because his guys got in over their heads and we came to pull them out, and it just broke him in some way. Saving me was the only thing he could do, and to this day, I almost feel like ..."
He paused, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, and shook his head. The muscles in his shoulders had gone so tense that his arms were drawn in tightly to his sides, and he was shivering a little. Nicole wondered if she ought to make him stop talking, but now that he'd started, it was pouring out of him.
"I know it doesn't work this way, at least I don't think it does, but to this day I feel like Jack held me there, stopped me from slipping away, through sheer force of will. He was up to his knees in death that day, all these deaths he felt personally responsible for, and I was the wall he ended up pressing his back against. He didn't even know me, but he wasn't going to let me die. He just kept talking to me, and that's what I remember mainly, is the way that his eyes held onto mine, and every time I'd start to close my eyes and slip away, he'd make me open them again. And all the time, he was crying, in this weird silent way." He gave a sudden, soft laugh. "So that's the story of how I met Jack. Sorry you asked?"
"No. Not at all. I ... can we pull over and stretch our legs for a minute?" To her, he still looked too tense to be safely driving.
Avery pulled off in the small gravel parking lot of a boarded-up gas station, its pumps forlornly tarped over. Nicole leaned over and hugged him. He made a soft sound and rested his face against her neck.
"I'm glad he was there," she said quietly, running her hand up and down the ridge of his spine. "I'm so glad you're here now."
Avery laughed softly against her neck. His face was slightly damp, from sweat, she thought, not tears. "I've told that story a few times. It never seems to get easier."
"I think I'd be worried if it was."
"Did you really need to stretch your legs?"
"Sure," she said, laughing herself now. "Why not."
They got out of the car, and, hand in hand, poked around the edges of the abandoned gas station's gravel apron. There was a fresh, chill wind. Nicole found a cheap dime-store ring, dropped by some long-ago motorist, with a piece of cut pink glass in the shape of a heart. She tried it on her pinky, but it didn't even fit there; it must have belonged to a child. She laid it gently back in the gravel for some future visitor to find.
"Ready to go on?"
"More than ready. Introduce me to some werewolves."
Chapter Ten
After another twenty minutes or so, Avery turned off the country highway into a small town, little more than a couple of chain stores and a gas station, and from there to an even smaller road. He'd driven with confidence before, but now he paused occasionally to check his phone's GPS, holding it up as the service flickered in and out. Nicole wondered what he'd do if they lost the signal completely.
The fields here were overgrown, the patches of woods larger, the mountains a dark wall looming over them. Instead of tidy little farmhouses, she glimpsed trailers with rickety wooden porches, set back in the trees.
"Okay," Avery muttered, "now this makes me think of home."
He slowed to a crawl on the road. There was no other traffic anyway. After starting to turn once, then straightening out with a mutter of "Not that one," Avery turned at a rust-riddled mailbox with its flag dangling tragically from a broken screw. There were no numbers that Nicole could see.
Avery eased the small car down a rutted driveway that was little more than two weed-choked tire tracks in a tunnel of trees. Nicole clung to her seat until he scraped his oil pan on a final pothole and came out in a clearing.
After Nicole's years of working with broken families, this kind of rural poverty was no longer an unfamiliar sight to her. A couple of broken-down mobile home trailers slumped in overgrown weeds. One had a blue tarp covering its roof, held down with rocks. A spotted goat, tied around the neck with a rope, was munching in a lazy kind of way at some of the long grass and gone-to-seed flowers in the yard. The other end of the rope was tied to the steering wheel of an ancient car, its body the color of rust and its axles, their tires long since vanished, propped up on concrete blocks. Other kinds of junk lurked in the weeds like icebergs rising from a choppy sea: a dead refrigerator with the door hanging open, a scabrous bicycle, a moldy recliner with a small tree growing out of the seat. There was a pickup truck, an ancient Dodge with a plywood bed, parked in front of the nearest trailer. The pair of ruts worn through the grass led right up to its back tires, exactly the same width.
Chickens scattered into the weeds as they stepped out of the car. Nicole looked automatically for aggressive dogs (none visible, though a cat was sunning itself on top of the pickup truck) and for any signs of power, water, and other utilities. There was a power pole by the driveway and a black cable looping down to the trailers. No way to tell, in the sunlight, if the power was turned on or off. A ramshackle outhouse behind the trailers had a beaten path to the door, so they didn't have running water. These were the kinds of assessments she made in determining the quality of a child's home environment.
She hoped it wouldn't turn out the wolf kids lived here.
"Did you grow up somewhere like this?" she asked Avery quietly.
"For the first part of my life," he said, reaching into the car for his cane. "Until people like you came for me when I was seven years old."
She'd guessed he'd been in foster care, but had never thought it through to its logical conclusion. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Don't be. I hated her at the time, but now I realize that social worker probably saved my life. I don't even know her name."
They walked past a garden, weedy but apparently still in active use; it was at the end of its season now, but bright-colored pumpkins and gourds peeked out of snarled vines. The near trailer, the one with the blue tarp over the roof, had a long wooden porch built onto the side. Chickens were perched on the railing and camped out on a pair of swaybacked couches under the porch's overhang. Bloomed-out petunias and still-blooming pansies grew in an old ur
inal by the sagging steps—a redneck effort to brighten up the place.
The porch creaked under them, and the boards sagged in a way that made Nicole afraid she was going to punch right through and break a leg. There was moss growing on the couches, and a buildup of chicken droppings that made her cringe.
Before Avery could knock on the door, it burst open and an old man, preceded by a large black assault rifle in his weedy arms, charged out onto the porch. Nicole's hands shot into the air. Avery simply remained where he was, one hand resting on his cane and the other out and visible.
The old man squinted back and forth between them, the rifle wavering from one to the other. Nicole held her breath. It seemed that today was her day for all the social-worker horror stories she'd heard to come back to haunt her: first the break-in, now someone pointing a gun at her.
The old guy was tall and skinny, with a short tobacco-stained beard and the most amazing eyebrows she'd ever seen, so bushy that they came close to obscuring his eyes. His feet were bare, bony ankles showing below the frayed hem of his camo pants. His long gray hair was tied back in a ponytail, and he wasn't wearing a shirt. She tried not to look at the yellowish curls of hair on his bare, shrunken chest.
"You the feds?" he snapped.
"Are you expecting feds?" Avery asked in a mild, nonthreatening voice. His body language matched his voice, Nicole noticed; he'd rounded his shoulders and tucked in his elbows, moving the cane forward a little to emphasize his lameness. He was not a large man anyway, muscular and compact, and now he seemed to have collapsed in on himself, becoming even smaller.
Wolf culture, she thought. He was in a strange wolf's territory, so he was trying to show he wasn't going to muscle in and take over. She wondered if he even realized he was doing it.
The question, combined with Avery's obvious lack of belligerence, seemed to throw the stranger off a bit. He squinted between the two of them, and sniffed the air. "Wolf," he said, nodding. Then his bushy eyebrows drew down as he stared at Nicole with eyes that were a startling yellow. "Not wolf. Don't know what you are."