by TJ Klune
It’d been all over the news for weeks. This poor little town where a major gas leak had taken place, leveling an entire neighborhood. Sixteen people had lost their lives, forty-seven more injured. A freak accident, investigators said. It was a one-in-a-million thing. It never should have happened. We will rebuild, the governor said. We will not abandon you. We will mourn those lost, but we will come back from this.
My mother and father were counted among those deceased. My mother had been identified by her teeth. No trace of my father had ever been found, but the fire had burned so hotly that that was expected. We’re sorry, I was told. We wish we could tell you more.
I nodded but didn’t speak. Abel’s hand was a heavy weight on my shoulder.
And under the next full moon, I became the witch of the most powerful pack in North America.
There was pushback, of course. I was so young. I had just been through a significant trauma. I needed time to heal.
Elizabeth was the loudest of all of them.
Abel listened. He was the Alpha. It was his job to listen.
But he sided against those who would shield me.
“He has his pack,” Abel said. “We will help him heal. All of us. Isn’t that right, Gordo?”
I didn’t say a word.
IT DIDN’T hurt. I thought it would. I didn’t know why. Maybe it was because the tattoos had hurt, or maybe because all I knew was pain when I opened my eyes every morning, but I still expected more.
But underneath the moon, with a dozen wolves standing before me, eyes glowing, I became their witch.
And it was more.
I could hear them, louder than I ever had before.
They said, ChildBrotherPack.
They said, LoveOursWitchOurs.
They said, We will keep you safe we will keep you with us you are ours you are pack you are SonLoveBrotherHome.
They said, Mine.
“DUDE,” RICO said, standing in an ill-fitting suit and hand-me-down tie, “this sucks.”
I stared down at my hands.
“Like, really sucks.”
I lifted my head to glare at him.
“Qué chingados.”
Whatever that meant.
Tanner and Chris came back over to us, arms laden with food. We were at the Bennett house. We’d buried my mother. Had an empty casket for my father. Elizabeth told me a wake was another tradition. People brought food and ate until they could eat no more.
I wanted to go to bed.
Tanner’s mouth was full. “Dude, they have these little sandwiches that have eggs in them.”
“So I can smell,” Rico said.
Chris handed me some kind of bread. “I don’t know what this is. But it has nuts in it. And my mom says nuts don’t let you be sad.”
“That’s not a thing,” Rico said.
“That sounds nuts,” Tanner said. “Get it? Because of the—yeah. You get it.”
We all gaped at him. He shrugged and ate more egg sandwich.
“Where’s mine?” Rico asked.
“I brought you a taquito,” Chris said.
“That’s racist.”
“But you like taquitos!”
“Maybe I wanted the crazy nut bread! I’m sad too!”
“You’re all so stupid.”
They grinned down at me. “Oh look,” Rico said. “It speaks.”
I cried then. For the first time that day. With a hand full of nut bread and surrounded by my best friends, I cried.
ABEL AND Thomas handled everything. No social worker came to try to take me away. School wasn’t disrupted. Our house was sold, and all the money was put away in a savings account I never touched. There was life insurance too, for the both of them. I didn’t care about the money. Not then. I barely understood what was going on.
I moved into the Bennett house. I had my own room. I had all my own things.
It wasn’t the same.
But I had no other choice.
The wolves sheltered me from the rest of the world even as they hid things from me.
But I found out. Eventually.
MARK REFUSED to leave my side.
On the nights when I couldn’t stand the sight of another person, he would stay outside my door.
Sometimes I would let him in.
He would motion for me to turn around, facing away from him.
I did.
On those nights, the hard ones, I would hear the rustle of clothes being discarded. The snap and groan of muscle and bone.
He would nuzzle my hand when I could turn back around.
I would climb into bed, and he would jump up beside me, the bedframe groaning under the combined weight. He would curl around me, my head under his chin, his tail covering my legs.
Those were the nights I slept the best.
MARTY WAS smoking a cigarette in the back of the shop when I came back for the first time.
He arched an eyebrow at me as he ashed the cig onto the ground.
I shuffled my feet.
“Couldn’t go to the funeral,” he said. “Wanted to, but a couple of the guys called in sick. Flu or some shit.” He coughed wetly before spitting something green on the asphalt.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s okay.”
“Thought about you.”
It was nice of him to say. “Thanks.”
He blew out a thick plume of rank smoke. He always rolled his own cigarettes, and the pungent tobacco made my eyes water. “My dad died when I was a baby. Mom hung herself when I was fourteen. Took to the road after that. Didn’t take any handouts.”
“I don’t want anything.”
He scratched his scruffy jaw. “No, I don’t expect you do. Can’t pay you much.”
“I don’t need much.”
“Yeah, you got those Bennetts in your pocket, don’t ya.”
I shrugged because no matter what I said, he wouldn’t understand.
He stubbed out the cigarette on the bottom of his boot before dropping it into a metal coffee can already filled to the brim with discarded butts. He coughed again before leaning forward in his lawn chair, the white and green and blue nylon fraying. “I’ll work your ass off. Especially if I’m paying you.”
I nodded.
“And if that Abel Bennett tries to give me hell, I’ll drop you fast. We clear?”
“Yeah. Yes.”
“All right. Let’s get your hands dirty.”
I knew then what the wolves meant when they said that a tether didn’t have to be a person.
“LOOK AT her,” Rico said, sounding awed.
We looked.
Misty Osborn. Her hair was crimped, and she had big front teeth. She laughed loudly and was one of the popular girls in the eighth grade.
“I like older women,” Rico decided.
“She’s thirteen,” Chris said.
“You’re twelve,” Tanner said.
I said nothing. It was warm, and my sleeves were long.
“I’m going to ask her to the dance,” Rico said, looking as if he was steeling himself.
“Are you insane?” Chris hissed at him. “She would never go with you. She likes jocks.”
“And you’re really not a jock,” Tanner pointed out.
“Just gotta change her mind,” Rico said. “Not that hard. Make her see behind my skinny nonjock body. Just you watch.”
We watched as he stood from the lunch table.
He marched over to her.
The girls around her giggled.
We couldn’t hear what he was saying, but from the look on Misty’s face, it wasn’t anything good.
He nodded a lot. Waved his arms around like a lunatic.
Misty frowned.
He pointed at her, then back at himself.
Misty frowned even more.
She said something.
Rico came back to the table and sat down. “She said my English was very good for someone born in another country. I’ve decided she’s a jerk and not deserving of my love and devotion.”
&
nbsp; Tanner and Chris glared at her from across the lunchroom.
When she stood to leave, tossing her hair, my fingers twitched. Her metal lunch table jerked to the left, knocking her in the leg. She tripped and fell, her face in Tuesday’s lumpy mashed potatoes.
Rico laughed. That was important to me.
THEY TALKED about girls sometimes, Rico more than the others. He loved the way they smelled and their tits, and sometimes he said they gave him a boner.
“I’m going to get so many girlfriends,” he said.
“Me too,” Chris said. “Like, four of them.”
“That sounds like so much work,” Tanner said. “Can’t you just have one and be happy with it?”
I didn’t talk about girls. Not even then.
WE WERE out behind the house, Mark and me.
He was saying, “…and when I shifted for the first time, I scared myself so badly, I shit myself. Surrounded by everyone, I just shit. I squatted down like a dog and everything. That’s when I think Thomas decided he wanted Richard to be his second instead of me.”
I laughed. It felt strange, but I did it anyway.
Mark was watching me.
“What?” I asked, still chuckling.
He shook his head slowly. “Uh—nothing. I just—it’s nice. Hearing you. Like this. I like it. When you laugh.”
Then he blushed furiously and looked away.
I CARRIED the wooden raven wherever I went. Whenever I couldn’t breathe, I would squeeze it until it pressed into my flesh. There would be an imprint in my palm for hours.
One time the wing cut me, and I bled on it.
I hoped it would leave a scar.
It didn’t.
OSMOND CAME back to Green Creek. Men in suits followed him. He wanted to speak to Abel and Thomas. He didn’t want me there.
Abel ignored him. “Gordo, if you please.”
I followed them into Abel’s office.
The door shut behind us.
“He’s a child,” Osmond said as if I wasn’t in the room.
“He’s the witch to the Bennett pack,” Abel said evenly. “And he belongs here as much as anyone. And even if I didn’t insist upon it, my son would.”
Thomas nodded without speaking.
“Now that that’s out of the way,” Abel said, settling in behind his desk, “what brings you to my home that a phone call wouldn’t have sufficed?”
“Elijah.”
“I don’t know any Elijah.”
“No, you wouldn’t. But you would know her by her true name.”
“And I wait with bated breath.”
“Meredith King.”
And for the very first time, I saw something akin to fear on Abel Bennett’s face. “Now that is something I did not expect. She’s… she’d be Thomas’s age, wouldn’t she?”
Osmond looked unfazed. “She has picked up the mantle of her father.”
“Dad?” Thomas asked. “What is he talking about? Who is—”
Abel smiled thinly. “You would have been too young to remember. The Kings were… well. They were a rather aggressive clan of hunters. They believed all wolves were an affront to God and it was their duty to rid them from the earth. They came for my pack. And we made sure very few walked away.” His eyes flashed red. “The patriarch, Damian King, was gravely injured. He lived, but barely. As did his son, Daniel. The rest of his clan did not. Meredith was his other child, but she would’ve only been around twelve at the time. But it seems as if she’s decided to resume her father’s work.” He looked back at Osmond. “Elijah. How curious.”
“A prophet of Yahweh,” Osmond said. “A god from the Iron Age in the Kingdom of Israel. Yahweh performed miracles through Elijah. Raising the dead. Raining fire down from the sky. At Jesus’s side during his Transfiguration on the mountaintop.”
“A little on the nose,” Abel said. “Even for the Kings. Wasn’t there another brother as well?”
“David,” Osmond said. “Though he was shunned because he no longer had the will to hunt.”
Abel nodded slowly. “How surprising. And this Elijah?”
“She is killing wolves.”
Abel sighed. “How many so far?”
“Two packs. One in Kentucky. Another in North Carolina. Fifteen in total. Three of them children.”
“And why has she not been contained?”
Osmond wasn’t pleased. “She remains underground. We’ve dispatched teams after her, but her clan is elusive. They are small in number, but they move quickly.”
“And what do you ask of me?”
“You’re our leader,” Osmond said. “I’m asking you to lead.”
OSMOND LEFT unfulfilled. But before he did, I stopped him on the porch.
He looked down at me with barely disguised disdain.
I dropped my hand. “Can I—”
“Your father.”
I nodded.
Osmond stepped away from me. I thought his teeth were longer than they’d been just a moment before. “He won’t bother anyone ever again. His magic has been stripped. Robert Livingstone was strong, but we tore it from his skin. He is nothing but a shell.”
Osmond left me standing on the porch.
Standing next to his car was Richard Collins.
He was smiling.
I TURNED thirteen, and Mark put his arm around my shoulders.
It caused my stomach to twist.
I wondered if that was why I didn’t stare at girls like Rico.
His nose was in my hair, and he was smiling.
I never wanted it to stop.
MY MOTHER was buried near a red alder tree. Her stone was small and white.
It said,
CATHERINE LIVINGSTONE
SHE WAS LOVED
I sat with my back against the tree and felt the earth beneath my fingertips.
“I’m sorry,” I told her once. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more.”
Sometimes I pretended she answered me.
She said, “I love you, Gordo. I love you.”
She said, “I am so proud of you.”
She said, “Why didn’t you believe me?”
She said, “Why didn’t you save me?”
She said, “You can’t trust them, Gordo. You can never trust a wolf. They don’t love you. They need you. The magic in you is a lie—”
My fingers dug into the earth.
CARTER WAS wrinkled and pink and screamed a tiny scream.
I touched his forehead and he opened his eyes, quieting down almost immediately.
Elizabeth said, “Would you look at that. He likes you, Gordo.” She smiled at me, skin pale, tired as I’d ever seen her. But still she smiled.
I leaned down and whispered in his little ear, “You will be safe. I promise. I’ll help keep you safe.”
A tiny fist pulled on my hair.
WHEN I kissed Mark Bennett for the first time, it wasn’t planned. It wasn’t something I set out to do. I was awkward. My voice broke more often than not. I was moody and had a small hair on my chest that didn’t seem to know if it was coming or going. I had zits and unnecessary erections. I accidentally blew up a lamp in the living room when I was angry for no apparent reason.
And Mark Bennett was everything I was not. He was sixteen and ethereal. He moved with grace and purpose. He was smart and funny and still had a tendency to follow me wherever I went. He brought me food while I was at the shop, and the guys gave me shit. Marty would holler that my boy was here, and I had fifteen minutes or he was going to fire me. Mark’s nostrils would flare as I approached, and he would watch me as I rubbed grease from my fingertips with an old cloth I kept in my back pocket. He would say hey, and I’d say hey back, and we’d sit outside the garage, our backs against brick, our legs crossed. He’d hand me a sandwich he’d made. He always watched me eat it.
It wasn’t planned. How could it be when I didn’t know what it would mean?
It was a Wednesday in the summer. Carter was crawling and babbling. No
other wolves had been hurt by the woman known as Elijah. The pack was happy and healthy and whole. Abel was a proud Alpha, doting on his grandson. Thomas preened. Elizabeth rolled her eyes. The wolves ran under the light of the moon and smiled in the sun.
The world was a bright and brilliant place.
My heart still hurt, but the sharp ache was fading. My mother was gone. My father was gone. My mother had said the wolves would lie, but I trusted them. I had to. Aside from Chris and Tanner and Rico and Marty, they were all I had left.
But then there was Mark, Mark, Mark.
Always Mark.
My shadow.
I found him in the woods behind the pack house.
He said, “Hey, Gordo.”
And I said, “I want to try something.”
He blinked. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
There were bees in the flowers and birds in the trees.
He was sitting with his back to a big-leaf maple. His bare feet were in the grass. He wore a loose tank top, his tan skin almost the color of his wolf. His fingernails were bitten, a habit he had yet to break. He brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. He looked happy and carefree, an apex predator who feared little. He watched me, curious what I was on about but not pushing it.
“Close your eyes,” I said, unsure of what I was doing. What I was capable of.
He did, because I was his friend.
I got to my knees and shuffled toward him.
My heart thundered in my chest.
My skin was sweaty.
The raven fluttered.
I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his.
It was warm and dry and catastrophic.
His lips were slightly chapped. I would never forget that.
I didn’t move. Neither did he.
Just the slightest of kisses on a warm summer day.
I pulled away.
His chest heaved.
His opened his eyes. They were orange.
He said, “Gordo, I—”
His breath was harsh against my face.