by Ann Vremont
Cruz approached the door, rested his forehead against it. He could hear her crying, the sound muffled as if she had her face pressed against a pillow. He placed his palm against the wood. "Tam, I don’t want to hurt you. Please, baby."
Stay away, Cruz. Stay away.
The words slammed into him from two directions -- from the room beyond and out there, somewhere in the night. He couldn’t fight them both. Cruz turned, scooped her keys up and placed them on the table. He lifted the torn blouse, brushed it slowly against his lips, deeply inhaling, and then he let it fall to the floor as he left and set the bottom lock behind him.
*****
Cruz took the rear stairwell, stepping out to the back alley along which he had stalked Lonnie the night before. He could still detect their presence, smell where he’d been alongside the dumpster and Woodrow’s increasingly erratic path. He followed it, letting the lingering odor of fear and sweat wash Tamsyn from his mind.
A new layer of smells competed for his attention -- diesel and oil laid down on the asphalt from the garbage trucks that had gone through that morning, interrupted by laundry forgotten for the night on the lines that spanned the buildings.
He stopped, suddenly hyper aware of the smells in the alley.
"Dominic?" He said it low pitched but solid, letting his voice carry. He was near a side alley, one that he knew dead ended and he stepped towards it, wary. There was more than Dominic’s scent here, something that worried him far more than Lonnie and his little crew ever could.
Two paths had been traveled, one in and one out. The trail was feral, carnivorous and dipped in blood. Cruz raced down the dead end. Trash littered the ground. Old paper had collected along the sides of the building and was layered thick at the end. A narrow shaft of moonlight reflected up from the ground as a pale, silvery blue.
It was enough light for him to see Dom in his shifter form, on his side and unresponsive. His clothes were strewn around him, the shirt shredded. He’d never smelled another shifter besides Dom, but he knew that was what he was smelling now. At least three different ones.
Stay away, Cruz. Stay away.
The warning that had echoed through his head back in Tamsyn’s apartment took on a new meaning. Dominic hadn’t been warning him away from Tam but from this. He put his head to the massive chest, felt the faint rise, heard the dull whoop, thump of blood still flowing through Dominic’s heart.
There was more blood on the ground than what Dominic could have bled. There was a pool of it and a drag trail back out to the main alley. Whoever they were, they’d left carrying their wounded and unable to finish Dom off.
Using his t-shirt and the remains of Dominic’s, he made a compress for the worst of the wounds--a nasty bite to the throat. He grabbed the jeans, found Dom’s wallet and keys still in the pockets. He stuffed them into his jeans and shredded the pants for more dressing before he picked Dom up.
Two blocks he carried him, then up the fire escape, praying to whatever god was there to listen that no one would glance out their back window. Cruz climbed through the window he’d left cracked and placed Dom on the bed before he rushed downstairs to the full first aid kit they kept in the garage.
Dominic had made sure they could take care of themselves. He had passed onto Cruz the skills from the emergency tech classes he had taken in the same way he’d taught him how to build a fire or change a tire. They could suture one another’s wounds, set up IVs, transfuse blood--whatever needed done.
That’s what Cruz did back upstairs with Dominic’s limp body. Stitches, super glue, a tube running red between their bodies. His vision blurring as he worked, he heard Dom’s voice faintly in his head.
Stop the flow, Manito. You’re losing too much.
*****
Cruz woke, tongue stuck to the top of his mouth, lips cracked. He was on the floor, a blanket over him. Lifting his left arm, he saw a band-aid over the inside bend of his elbow, a greenish bruise twice the size of a half dollar spreading beneath it. He lifted his head high enough to see an empty, bloody bed.
"Dominic!" He yelled the name, not caring whether the sound carried through the building’s bricks walls. He pulled himself up, calling Dom, listening for any sound in return.
He stumbled through the front room, checked the door to the front stair well and found it locked. Still staggering, he headed for the other stair well, saw that his web site was open on the computer.
The door to the second stairwell was unlocked. Cruz heard the squeal of the garage door’s hydraulics, the rusted rumble of the Ranchero. He half slid down the steps, into the garage bay. The door was coming down, early morning light filtered under it. The engine cut on the Ranchero and both vehicle doors opened. Dom leapt out, catching Cruz before he hit the ground. Dominic still smelled of blood and disinfectants and…
Tamsyn.
The passenger door slammed and then she was around the front of the Ranchero, leaning worriedly over him.
"What’s wrong? I thought you said he was okay?" Her voice was high, panicked. Cruz had never heard it like that.
"He’s low on blood."
"Where?" Her hands searched Cruz for injury, his face and throat, his torso, down his thighs. She checked his pulse and found it racing. "Is it internal?"
Just help me get him upstairs, Tam. It’s safer up there."
Tamsyn was stronger than her soft curves suggested. She’d spent countless nights as a kid and then as a teenager picking her mom up off the floor and helping her to the nearest couch or bed. And she had been forced to fight off her mom’s equally drunken johns, guys twice her size who thought she was fair game once the old lady passed out.
She used that strength now, bending at the knees and wrapping her arms around his chest, lifting him onto his feet. "How much?"
"Maybe twenty percent." Dominic pulled a second screen down on the garage door--a heavy steel mesh--and locked it into place. His own steps seemed shell shocked as he followed Tamsyn and Cruz up the stairs. "I need to get an IV in him."
Dominic locked the apartment doors once they were inside. "Set him on the couch."
She complied and lifted Cruz’s head to look into his eyes.
"You’re here." He lifted his hand, tried to touch her check but didn't have the strength. "Why?"
"Dom didn’t exactly explain." She looked over her shoulder, moving out of the way as Dom approached with an IV bag and tube. "But I know he wouldn’t just take a customer’s car."
"Hold this up." He shoved the bag into her hand and grabbed Cruz’s right arm, quickly disinfecting it and starting the IV.
"What the hell is this all about?" She looked between them. "Did Lonnie do this?"
Dom snorted. "No. I’ll explain when there’s time."
His warning glance told Cruz to keep his mouth shut in the meantime. Dominic went into the kitchen, searching through the drawers until he came up with a roll of duct tape. Back out in the front room, he tore a long strip off, took the drip from Tamsyn and taped it by its top edge to the wall.
From the closet, he pulled out two sports duffels, tossed one at Tamsyn. "Take my room, just the basics." She got up and he grabbed her arm. "Pack fast."
He took the second duffel into Cruz’s room, ransacking the drawers, closet and under the bed before he moved into the bathroom. When he was done he went back into his room, punched a hole in the drywall and pulled out a metal lock box. Cruz knew it was full of cash--more than twenty grand.
Dominic handed off his full bag to Tamsyn and proceeded to finish filling the one she had started. Cracking the side of the desk top computer and removing the hard drive, he nodded at Cruz’s arm before looking at Tam.
"They teach you how to take one of those out yet?"
"Yeah, beginning of the semester."
"Good, finish him up for me." He went into the kitchen, grabbing the spare first aid kit. "Help him into his jacket."
"I’m good." Cruz gently brushed Tamsyn away after she had removed the IV and grabbed his ja
cket. He had no idea what the hell was going on, but he was sure it was his fault. He grabbed Dom’s arm. Glancing quickly in Tamsyn’s direction, he asked his brother, "Why?"
Dominic paled for an instant and then projected the answer into Cruz’s mind. They’re coming, Manito. Not for us. For her.
*****
The Ranchero had a matching cover over its bed. Cruz tossed the camping gear into the back. Tamsyn’s battered suitcase and school bag were already in there, along with the two duffels and the laptop from the garage’s office. He latched the lid and raised the bay door’s security mesh just as Dom came down the stairs, curls of smoke following him.
"You open the compressor caps?"
Cruz nodded. He had made sure nothing would blow and kill someone when the fire trucks arrived.
"Good, get in the car." Dom hit the bay door opener and then activated the garage’s emergency sprinklers. Upstairs, more than six years of their lives--the longest they'd ever stayed in one place--crackled and popped.
Dominic and Cruz piled into the Ranchero’s cab, where Tamsyn was already waiting. "Great, grand theft auto and arson."
"They’ll be looking for the tow truck, Tam, not for this, at least not today." Dominic whipped the Ranchero out of the garage, peeling rubber as they took off down the street.
"Manifold won’t hold much longer," Cruz warned. He glanced down, saw Tamsyn’s hands shaking in her lap. He put his hand down on top of hers and gently squeezed.
"We just need to make it out of Hoekstra -- up past Ajax and into the mountains." Dom checked the mirrors as he drove, searching for the flashing lights of a police car. Early morning, the surrounding businesses were closed and shuttered. It could be fifteen or more minutes before the fire was called in, but he couldn't risk their being seen.
Tamsyn looked to Cruz and then Dominic. "Then you’ll tell me what the hell is going on?"
"Tell you, yes." Dominic frowned, his grip on the steering wheel tightening. "Show you, too."
Cruz wrapped an arm around her shoulders, his heart rate accelerating at the import of Dom’s words. Whatever they were facing, one thing was certain -- Tamsyn would finally know who, and what, he was.
They drove on in apparent silence, but by the time they stopped in Ajax at a truck stop with Wi-Fi, Dominic had communicated everything to Cruz. He had awoken to find Cruz unconscious from the transfusion. He’d slapped a band-aid on Cruz’s arm and then decided an IV was needed. Stepping into the front room, his attention had been drawn immediately to the computer screen. Cruz’s website, left open, was running a video loop.
You told him to prove it, Manito. He did.
Cruz wanted to believe it was a fake, but the video Dominic had watched had perfectly followed the patterns and physiology of their transformation. From there, Dominic had responded -- the instant messages flying between them.
That smell Dominic had complained about, that he claimed poured off of Cruz for the last six months whenever Tamsyn was near or heavy in Cruz's thoughts, had been a beacon. The scent finally had found others like them who sensed it for what it was -- a male shifter in the presence of a female regressive.
A woman, almost like them, her body waiting for one final transformative phase.
Now all they had to do was convince Tamsyn and keep her safe.
They started that process about thirty miles out from the truck stop. Dom told her how someone had attacked him last night, leaving out the details on his attackers. She saw for herself the changes in Dom’s wounds. The sutures already had skin growing over them, leaving Dominic driving with one hand while he pulled the stitches out with the other.
She asked again if it was Lonnie.
"Promise not to freak, baby."
She smiled up at Cruz. He’d slipped and called her "baby" a couple of times on the drive already. Only it wasn’t a slip-up now. She knew how he felt, he didn’t have to hide it anymore. And she didn’t seem to mind.
Dominic drove the Ranchero a full loop around the truck stop, making sure he knew the pattern flows and way out in case they needed to make a quick escape. Satisfied, he parked the vehicle where it wasn’t visible from the road, sliding between two semi-trucks.
Dom looked across Tamsyn to Cruz. "Can’t do it inside."
Cruz nodded, noticing the way Dom had moved his hand up on the steering wheel and turned toward Tamsyn. He was ready to quiet her with gentle force if she went into hysterics.
Cruz put his hand on her thigh, let it rest there. "You know we don’t talk about where we come from or who our parents are, right?"
Nodding, she covered his hand with her own. "Just that you lost them when you were still a baby."
"Police found us wandering the desert -- figured at first that our parents were illegals and had died trying to cross the border with us. Only Dom’s English was perfect -- at least for a five-year-old. So they put us in foster care while they tried to find our parents."
"In the desert, just the two of you?" She reached up, caressed his cheek and then reached over to sympathetically squeeze Dominic’s arm.
Dominic continued the story. "We were in and out of homes for more than eleven years. Baby mills just in it for the money, alcoholics, abusers. At seventeen, I ran away and took Cruz with me. Not because of all that -- I could protect him from those people as long as no one knew the truth."
When Dom stopped, she looked to Cruz for explanation. "The truth about what?"
"What we are." Cruz nervously rubbed his hand along her leg. "You’re going to think we’re crazy, but what we are -- what attacked Dominic last night -- are shape shifters -- wolves."
She looked between the two of them, her lips moving without any sound until she finally looked back to Cruz. "So Dom stole a car, pulled me out of my house and set fire to your building because you two think you’re...werewolves?"
There was an undercoating of anger to her words. Cruz sighed, knowing that, for at least a few minutes, he would have to replace her anger with fear -- if not absolute terror.
"Tam, baby, just look down at my hand."
Scowling, she cast one last glance at Dominic and the almost healed wound on his neck and then focused on the hand on her leg. Her lips compressed in growing fury.
Cruz closed his eyes, let his head fall onto Tamsyn’s shoulder. He didn’t want complete transformation -- couldn’t risk it in public in broad daylight no matter how cut off they seemed from view.
And he wouldn’t do that to her until he was sure she was ready.
Cruz willed the skin on his hand to coarsen and grow longer, felt the initial dizziness that came with a slow, partial transformation. Without seeing it, he knew what she was looking at--the lengthening of his fingers and nails, the joints growing fat, nails curving and thickening into claws that could eviscerate a human in one stroke.
Nothing like the oversized dog she had thrown her arms around last night. This was something else, an in-between phase of expansion before his form could contract into the wolf. He could stay like that, bring his whole body to that nightmare inducing shape and hold it, if he wanted to.
"Stop!"
Cruz snapped back, his hand once again human. Tamsyn was breathing hard and Cruz rooted around in the door compartment. The Ranchero’s owner had a bunch of brown lunch bags inside the car. They hadn’t asked him what it was for -- the smell of pot on his clothes had made it obvious.
"Breathe into this."
She took the bag, held it to her face, eyes pinched shut as she inhaled and exhaled. When she had stopped hyperventilating, she pulled the bag far enough away from her face to ask, "Okay, so why did Dom come and get me?"
Cruz couldn’t answer. He didn’t want to tell her that, if what Dom had learned was true, the monster that had just frightened her was inside her, too.
Dominic answered for him. "You’re like us."
She shook her head. "I’m happy to report you’re wrong on this one, Dominic."
Dominic nodded at Cruz, signaling that it was time
to unlock the doors. "The restaurant has Wi-Fi. Just see what we’ve learned."
Cruz helped Tamsyn from the vehicle, not daring to meet her gaze. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Her legs seemed wobbly, but she’d been crammed like a sardine between him and Dom for over three hours.
Standing, she leaned against him, her fists knotting his t-shirt as she buried her head against his shoulder and took a deep, shaky breath. He wrapped his arms around her, brought his lips to rest against her ear. Relief flooded him. She wasn't terrified of or disgusted by him -- not yet, anyway.
"You’re safe from me."
A little nod of faith he knew he hadn't earned and then she glanced across the vehicle’s roof to Dom. "You really believe I’m like you?"
Dom shut the door, left it unlocked for a quick escape. "Doesn’t matter if I do. The guys who attacked me last night believe it. You're not safe."
With those words hanging in the air between them, they entered the truck stop and found a corner booth, Tamsyn protectively tucked between the two men. Dom ordered while Cruz set up the laptop, probing the Wi-Fi system to see how well he could cloak their location if anyone was trying to track them. When he was satisfied with the security, he opened up his web site.
Tamsyn caught Cruz’s glance at her and realized he was trying to shield the video from her. "Let me see."
Dom nodded and Cruz angled the screen so all three of them could watch. Her hand dropped beneath the table, finding and wrapping around Cruz’s to squeeze as the guy on the video repeated the process she’d watched earlier but across his entire body before taking on the wolf form.
She let go of Cruz’s hand, blinked slowly, just once, and then slugged Cruz’s shoulder. "Last night at your apartment…"
Cruz swallowed, Dom released a rough snort. "Busted, Manito."
Nosing a bit of her hair out of the way, Cruz whispered in her ear, "I just needed a little…" He sniffed once before gently pulling the bottom of her earlobe into his mouth.
"Cool it," Dom growled and tried to refocus the two lovers on the screen in front of them. "This shit is real -- no Hollywood special effects."