by Stephen Cole
He was stripped to his shorts, sweating and shivering under a flimsy quilt in a narrow bed.
With a low moan he rolled out of bed, scrabbled at the sheet, certain of what he would see. But the wolf pelt was not back beneath him. The lumpy mattress was stained but bare.
He jumped as a door to his right opened.
It was Kate, her hair bundled up into a baseball cap, wearing a baggy shirt and trousers. She held a brown bag of groceries in the crook of her arm and was looking at him oddly. ‘You OK?’
Tom nodded. ‘I guess.’
‘You’ve had a fever.’ She set down the groceries and started to tuck the corner of his sheet back under the mattress. ‘Could be your body fighting against whatever my mother’s been spooning down your throat for the last month. Or it could be withdrawal symptoms.’
‘Thanks, Nurse.’ Tom stumbled over to the window hoping for some fresh air, but caught instead a lungful of car exhaust from the busy street outside. ‘Where are we?’
‘Goldendale. Delivered as the lady promised.’
He stared at her. ‘Already?’
Kate snorted. ‘It took forever! You may have been ill, but at least you slept through all her gross stories about swinging parties and stuff.’
Tom grimaced. ‘How long was I out for?’
‘All day. I’ve checked us in to a motel for tonight.’ She pulled out two Pot Noodles and flicked the switch on a battered kettle. ‘Hungry?’
He gave her a tight smile. ‘If it’s vegetarian.’
She read the label. ‘Sweet and sour.’
‘Sounds like the two of us.’ He smiled properly this time. ‘Though I guess you do have your sweet moments too.’
Kate mimed sticking her fingers down her throat.
Tom blushed. ‘Seriously though. Thanks for taking care of me.’
‘Runs in the family, I guess. Just don’t count on me doing it for a month.’
Tom turned away angrily. ‘You know what? Screw you.’
‘Hey.’ Kate sat beside him, softly. ‘Sorry. I’ve spent the last three years living in chat rooms. I keep thinking you can see the emoticons when I speak.’
Tom turned to her. ‘Huh?’
‘You know. “Colon-dash-right bracket” equals smiley face. “Semi-colon-dash-right bracket” equals winking smiley face. You know, “This is me joking so don’t take offence”.’ She pulled the relevant faces for him. ‘All that stuff.’
Tom nodded and managed a half-hearted smiley face of his own. But his attention was taken more by the way Kate’s pale green eyes seemed to glitter even in a dingy motel room.
The kettle clicked off and she turned away. She poured boiling water into the Pot Noodles, stirred them with a teaspoon and passed one to him. ‘Peace offering.’
They shovelled down the noodles in hungry silence.
When she’d finished, Kate passed him a ticket from her purse. ‘Better rest up, sick boy. The bus leaves at five o’clock tomorrow and it’s a long trip.’
Tom drained the last of his noodles. ‘Where to?’
‘New Orleans.’
‘But that’s about two-and-a-half thousand miles away!’ He frowned. ‘Why New Orleans?’
‘Because … ’ She leaned forward, an amused smile on her thin lips. ‘Jicaque.’
Zhi-car-key? ‘Bless you.’ Tom met her gaze unblinkingly. ‘You know, it’s hard to look mysterious when you have a noodle sauce moustache.’
She pulled away and made a funny noise. He realised it was the first real laugh he’d heard from her.
‘So what’s Jicaque?’ he asked as Kate wiped her mouth and checked her reflection. ‘Sounds like it should be a chilli dip or something.’
‘It is a he. Supposed to be some kind of medicine man or witch doctor,’ Kate said. ‘I heard he lives in New Orleans, somewhere. And that he can cure newbloods, if they’ve been turned recently enough.’
‘Cure?’ Tom’s heart leapt. ‘So you weren’t kidding me about being able to help? This guy is real? Really real?’
‘Whoa, there. This will not be a cinch, Tom,’ Kate cautioned. ‘I’ve no idea where in New Orleans he’s supposed to live – or what he looks like. And we can’t exactly go around asking for directions to the local witch doctor …’ She sat back, thoughtful. ‘He’s supposed to be like this Obi-wan type for white witches.’
‘Alec Guinness or Ewan McGregor?’
Kate grinned. ‘Ewan, I hope. I like my Jedi knights young and cute.’
Tom slumped back down on the bed. ‘How did you hear about him, anyway?’
She shrugged. ‘Conversations online. Years spent posting to extreme possibility newsgroups, or speaking in chat rooms with people who’ve lived through all kinds of weird shit.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ Tom remarked lightly.
‘Hey.’ Kate’s lip had curled down in disapproval. ‘I’m sure you’re Mr Totally Straight, but my whole life’s been an X-File, OK? Only there’s no cute federal agent coming to save my day. Pardon me if I need to talk to people who don’t think I’m totally nuts or delusional.’
‘OK, OK!’ Tom said quickly. ‘Jicaque. New Orleans. Thanks. It’s a start.’
Kate nodded. ‘We can find a webshack on the way. I can look up some of my old e-friends and try to get the latest on him.’
Tom sighed. ‘It’s going to take us days to get there by bus.’
‘Uh-huh. But it’s safer than hitching.’ She yawned noisily. ‘We don’t know who’s waiting and watching out there.’
‘You want the bed?’ asked Tom.
‘Yeah.’ Her willowy body arched gracefully as she enjoyed a lengthy stretch. ‘You thought I made it for you? Get real, sick boy. You get the couch.’
She kicked off her boots and pulled herself beneath the covers fully clothed, without another word.
Tom took a spare blanket and sprawled ruefully on the couch. He watched TV with the sound turned down, listening to her breathing grow deeper, more rhythmic. But he couldn’t relax. He flicked endlessly from Cartoon Network to CNN, each time convinced he’d see some headline screaming NEW SEATTLE BOY MURDER: COPS HUNT KILLERS, or Marcie Folan’s face filling the screen, weeping at a press conference with a big picture of Wesley smiling cutely out from behind her.
The moon was up high in the sky, and he could feel himself sweating. He told himself to stay calm. Every minute, every hour, right through the sleepless night.
The next day passed just as slowly as they waited for five o’clock to roll around. They couldn’t go out and risk being seen, and besides, the tickets had been pricey. They needed a cheap day.
For cheap, read dull. Tom had won and lost the jackpot on every slot machine in the lobby three times over. Now he had to keep trooping back over to Kate, the money holder, to cadge quarters. It was a ritual that annoyed them both.
‘Why can’t you just give me one of the wallets?’ Tom asked tetchily.
Kate shook her head. ‘No deal. If you go ’wolf on me and lose your clothes, we lose the money.’
‘Thanks for your faith in me,’ Tom said sourly. ‘Maybe your pissing me off like this is more likely to make me go ’wolf,’ he countered.
Kate ignored him, burying her nose deep in some old book she was pretending to read.
The quarters had run out in the end. To make up the deficit, they ran out of a diner without paying for their coffee.
‘Can you believe we did that?’ Tom gasped once they’d reached the next block and declared themselves in the clear.
‘First we kill a creature from ancient mythology, then we steal coffee,’ said Kate dryly. ‘America’s most wanted.’
Now they were hanging out at the bus station, butts numb from the metal bench. The Greyhound dog stared out at them from posters and rumbling coach sides. Vagrants rummaged through trashcans, people hugged and kissed hellos and goodbyes.
Tom imagined his own family alighting from one of the buses, finding him waiting here. Grabbing him for a hug, and not letting go. He glanced over at a phonebo
oth for the tenth time.
‘Don’t even think it,’ Kate warned him, looking up from her book. ‘The first thing Mom will do is track down your folks and have them watched. If you get in touch, establish any kind of contact … she could use them to get to you.’
A terrible thought occurred to Tom. ‘What’s to stop her getting them anyway?’
‘I don’t think she’d risk the manhunt that would cause,’ reasoned Kate. ‘I mean, first you missing in strange circumstances, then your whole family? Uh-uh. Easier to chase the guy who’s already dead.’
Tom found he was grinding his teeth. ‘Well, can’t we go to the cops anonymously, just in case? Warn them my family could be in danger?’
Kate looked at him like he was a moron or something. ‘You think there aren’t ’wolves in the police? In the Mayor’s office? In the courts? Anywhere a useful blind eye might be turned?’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Tom said uneasily.
‘Over 800,000 people were reported missing to the FBI last year,’ Kate said. ‘They’re still missing. Mysterious, huh?’
‘OK,’ Tom fumed. ‘Enough said.’ He looked across at her. ‘What are you reading, anyway? That book looks like it came out of the Ark.’
‘It’s a volume of ancient werewolf lore and rituals,’ Kate said quietly. ‘I’m trying to find out all I can about silverbloods.’
Tom blushed. ‘Guess that’s the kind of homework I should be doing, huh?’
‘Some of us read. Some of us whine.’ Kate saw hurt flitting across Tom’s face. Realising she’d been harsh, she added a quick smile and stuck out her tongue.
Tom sighed. ‘So what does it say?’ he asked.
‘That fever’s quite common in the newly-turned. Plus there’s interesting stuff about something called a wereling.’
‘Which is?’
‘A particular type of silverblood. Very rare.’
‘So?’
‘OK. Skipping the “thee”s and “thou”s, a wereling is a resister whose humanity and compassion prevail in the ’wolf. Pureblood hardliners despised werelings as useless to the pack; liberals appreciated their rarity, saw in them the perfect synthesis of man and wolf.’ She paused, looking at Tom questioningly. Then continued. ‘In one of the old myths, there’s mention of a wereling arriving in the world around the dawn of Wolf Time. Depending on who you believe, he can be the saviour of the ’wolf race, or its destroyer.’
Tom felt cold alarm creeping over him. ‘And you think that I could be … ’
Kate couldn’t keep her face straight any longer, and dissolved in low giggles.
Tom relaxed. ‘Bitch!’ he said incredulously, but he was grinning too.
‘They’re just old stories,’ Kate said. ‘No one really believes them.’
Suddenly there was a loud cry over to their left. Tom jumped up, grabbing hold of Kate’s hand, ready to run. But all they saw was a young woman in a headscarf, staring around frantically, her hand to her mouth.
‘My baby,’ she gasped out. ‘I went to get some change, and now … ’ She started shouting: ‘Bobby! Bobby, honey, where are you?’
‘What did he look like?’ Tom asked.
Kate pulled her hand away and jabbed him in the ribs. ‘We’re not drawing attention to ourselves,’ she hissed, nodding at the crowd gathering around the woman. ‘Remember?’
‘He’s three years old, kinda big for his age with sandy hair,’ the woman began.
As she went on with her description Tom saw a half-eaten crustless sandwich in the child’s stroller. Concentrating, he could smell the peanut butter and grape jelly filling. He turned in a slow circle, trying to see if he could scent it anywhere else.
Kate tried to pull him away. ‘Stay out of this, Tom,’ she warned him. ‘You don’t know if she’s for real.’
‘I can smell him,’ Tom breathed. ‘Wait here.’
‘Don’t leave me!’ Kate panicked.
‘Just a few seconds,’ Tom promised her. Then he jogged across the concourse, sniffing the air. It was like he could home in on the scent on the little boy, and it was mingling now with the overwhelming stench of …
Tom hurried to the men’s room, and there was Bobby, grinning as his sandy-brown hair was buffeted in the blast from a hot air dryer.
‘I needed to go pee,’ the pudgy little boy announced.
‘When you gotta go, you gotta go,’ Tom agreed. He picked him up and carried him back across the concourse. He smelled like soap and candy, safe and clean. The way Joe used to smell. Tom had resented having a baby brother so much at the start, but—
He froze.
The smell of the plump little boy in his arms was making him salivate.
‘Here,’ Tom muttered, dumping Bobby in his mother’s arms without another word.
‘Thanks, mister,’ the woman called gratefully, but Tom was already walking away. The crowd began to disperse.
Kate appeared, carrying his rucksack as well as her own. ‘What am I, the porter now?’
Tom slumped down on another bench, sank his face into his hands. ‘I … I thought maybe I could find something good in all this mess,’ he whispered. ‘That perhaps I could help.’
‘You did help,’ Kate said softly, joining him. ‘You were right about the boy and you sniffed him out.’
Tom wiped tears from his eyes. ‘I wanted to eat him.’
‘But you didn’t,’ Kate said quietly. ‘You drew on the wolf in you without letting it out. I’ve never seen that before.’ She smiled at him. ‘Hey, wereling. Perfect synthesis of man and wolf … ’
‘There’s nothing perfect about me,’ Tom muttered. ‘What if next time that hunger hits me, I can’t control it? Can’t stop myself?’
Kate was silent for a long moment. ‘Come on,’ she said at last. ‘It’s almost five. We should get ready to board.’
Tom closed his eyes. You didn’t need to be Einstein to know why Kate hadn’t answered his question. She didn’t have an answer.
g
g
CHAPTER NINE
The journey through Oregon passed slowly. It was midnight now, and they were nearing Ontario. The bus was comfortable enough but Tom was miserable and self-absorbed; too restless to settle.
The moon glowed slyly in through the thin curtain Kate had dragged across the window. Tom’s face itched and tickled in its faint light. ‘You don’t think I’ll change, do you?’ he whispered to Kate for the twelfth time.
She didn’t look up from her book. ‘Tom, if I knew, I promise I would tell you.’
He sank further down in his seat. ‘The moon’s not even full any more.’
Kate sighed. ‘The moon is a big influence on werewolves all the time. The reason the full moon is associated with them most is because it’s the ’wolf Sabbath. A day of ancient rituals. Now come on, Tom, try to relax.’
‘I can’t.’ He shook his head, pushed back his dark hair with sweaty fingers. ‘I feel that if I just let myself go I could slip over the edge. Can you imagine what I might do to these people?’
‘Yes,’ said Kate simply. ‘Listen, we hit Twin Falls in five hours. Happy Homecoming to me.’
‘Great,’ he snorted. ‘I can take on anyone your mom missed.’
‘No you won’t,’ she told him flatly. ‘And since my mom ran amok there, kicking up all that fuss, I don’t think any other self-respecting ’wolf would go there either.’
‘Not till Wolf Time, anyway, right?’ Tom sighed. ‘What is that, anyway?’
Giving up on her book, Kate slapped its yellowed pages shut. ‘OK. Wolf Time. It’s a time described in an epic poem called Das Zeitalter des Werwolfs – in which werewolves gain dominion over the world. Full of werewolf warriors, strange portents and signs in the sky, destiny, the overthrowing of humanity, coming out of the shadows and bathing in the blood of man, yada yada yada … It’s a big thing in werewolf literature. Some see it as prophetic of a real time to come.’
‘Werewolf literature?’ Tom looked at her
sceptically. ‘Maybe I could major in that when I get in to Princeton.’
‘A lot of it’s actually beautifully written, in a sick kind of way,’ Kate said.
Tom rolled his eyes. Like he’d been serious. Kate was happy to dish out the sarcasm but never seemed to see it herself.
‘Das Zeitalter des Werwolfs is a good example,’ she continued. ‘It’s German, 17th century. The author’s unknown.’
‘I guess it’s the werewolf version of Planet of the Apes,’ said Tom, earning himself an ‘I-give-up’ look from Kate.
‘It’s all a bunch of crap, anyway,’ she said dismissively. ‘No one really believes it. I mean, they’d like to … but then I’d like to believe in the Tooth Fairy. What can you do?’ Kate turned back to her book.
Tom saw that the subject of Wolf Time was officially closed.
Soon bored and edgy again, he turned his attention to their fellow passengers. To distract himself, he tried to focus on the sounds around him, zeroing in on different voices. He smiled wickedly. He could do it, too – tune in to intimate conversations like they were secret live broadcasts going on all around him. If anyone was tailing him and Kate, perhaps he’d hear something that would give them away.
After ‘station-hopping’ from a woman going on about her holiday photos to a man talking about the problems he was having with his boss, Tom listened in on two guys a few seats behind him.
‘Take it now.’
‘Not yet.’
‘Now, while the dumb bitch is sleeping, go on.’
Tom grew instantly alert. The guys had boarded at the last stop, and had looked innocuous enough. But clearly they weren’t …
Casually he turned around, like he’d dropped something. He saw that the elderly black woman seated behind him had fallen asleep. The overstuffed bag lying on the empty seat next to her had fallen open, revealing a thick roll of banknotes wedged in a side-pocket.
Tom looked away. Maybe they wouldn’t really do it. He kept on listening.
‘Do it now! She won’t notice until we’re gone.’
One of the guys got up from his seat. Tom’s mind raced through his options. He could wake the old woman; or he could just turn around and stare at the guy, show him he’d been seen. The guy was an opportunist – he’d probably back down.