“Sorry,” he said, “only immediate family allowed.”
Veo probably would have complained, except I saw the look of shock on his face as he neared my bed.
“You have such bad luck with partners,” he said. I was inclined to agree.
I nodded, but didn’t have much to say. I was still trying to sort through stuff.
“A few of the men say they saw a wolf.” He shot me an embarrassed look. “A wolf that turned into a man.”
“Have you been drinking?” I asked him.
“Not me!” He looked affronted. “But that guy they call Teru had a lot of people convinced he was some kind of werewolf or something.” When I didn’t respond he said, “Well, he was awfully hairy and that unibrow of his is kind of creepy. We took some fingerprints. We can tie him to a lot of unsolved homicides, but there’s no record of this man. Who the hell was he?”
“I have no idea, sir. Until he bashed me over the head I’d never seen him before in my life.”
He seemed to accept my response and nodded. “This was a terrible thing, but without you and Ludo, we never would have cracked this case. And we solved it, Cavan. We blew this shit wide open.
“Trained wolves, picking off strong men, pitted against them. We’ve found the bodies of twelve missing men and a woman—a female boxer who disappeared from Oregon last year— all buried in the caves. This shit was huge.”
“Wow,” I said. “I had no idea.”
“We’re going to promote you to first class detective as soon as you’re out of here.”
“He’s taking a long vacation first,” Ludo said. “We’re going to Argentina.”
“Fair enough,” Veo said. He went on about something else, but the pain meds had me drifting into a dreamless, pleasant sleep. I missed the rest of what he said.
§ § § §
The hospital wouldn’t release me for two days. Ludo slept in my room both nights, wound tightly around me. On the third morning, we watched the news on TV that the three wolves captured in the raid on Masterson’s property had vanished from their holding pen at the quarantine station in Hawthorne, a south bay suburb of Los Angeles. There was no footage shot from inside the building, but closed circuit cameras outside caught images of three men fleeing from the scene.
“What now?” I asked Ludo, who kissed my bandaged face.
He shrugged. “They go back to the building.”
“The gallery?”
“Yes.”
“And they turn to stone?”
He nodded. “They were the only ones that didn’t kill humans. We had to let the others perish.” He jutted his chin toward the TV screen. “They helped me. I’m helping them. They have a chance to make it back to the lake.”
“They’re all from Argentina?” I asked.
“Yes. They’re my cousins.”
I tried to absorb this bit of news. “Care to explain…any time soon?”
He sighed, shifting away from me. “I lied to you,” he said.
“About what?”
“How long it’s been since I was…turned.”
“And how long has it been?”
“One hundred years.” He held up a hand. “I’m the only known were to survive that long without killing a human.”
“Christ…you’re an older man…a hell of a lot older.”
“When I swim the lake I’ll still look like this if it makes you feel any better.”
“Yeah…it does. But how…why did—”
“In Argentina, long before the legend of the lake became known, there were werewolves. And then out of nowhere, it came to be a belief that the seventh son in a family would be a werewolf. There was no evidence of this, but the fear was so widespread, parents began killing or abandoning their children. In 1920, the president of Argentina passed a law that the seventh son of each and every family would be his godson.
“And so…I was born…and I wasn’t a werewolf, but I became his godson. My mother took advantage of my youthful stupidity when I swam the lake and got rid of me. By the way, the werewolf law still exists in Argentina to this day.”
“Really?”
“Yep. The seventh son in every family becomes the president’s godson. I’ve heard that he attends many of these baptisms…many of them around election time.”
I grinned. “Of course. I have a question. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think there was a reason to…no. Wait. That’s not quite true. I felt that when the time was right it would come up. Before I met you, I had no reason to not kill except that wolves kept showing up. They knew I’d never killed a human. They wanted to stay clean, too. I could protect them by turning them to stone. On full moons, some of the younger ones couldn’t handle the pressure of not hunting or running and they’d violate my protection. But the six wolves at the gallery stayed true. One by one, they’ve all gone home and swum the lake.”
He paused. “I felt I had to look after each and every one of them, particularly because Teru was out there killing people, turning men to weres. He was just a sick wolf. There are bad ones, just like there are bad people out there.”
“Wasn’t he the gray wolf that went missing? The first one?”
He smiled at me. “No. I was the gray wolf. I came and went…”
“How come Ky didn’t notice it before the other night?”
“We moved locations every couple of months but we liked the beach house and the wolves have a special soft spot for Ky. Since he’s been spending time there they’ve all wanted to watch over him.”
I tried to sit up, but I had no strength in me. He urged me to relax. He picked up the pain remote.
“No, don’t. We need to talk, Ludo. I want to know everything. How did you turn the wolves to stone?”
“Mind over matter. Literally. Look, Teru couldn’t touch my wolves when they’d turned to stone. He didn’t know where they—and I—were for the longest time. Of course, there’s always one idiot in every pack and I had a young pup named Diego who took off one night. I followed him and got caught. This was back in New York… That’s how I wound up as a sex slave. Teru was sadistic. He didn’t want me to die right away. He wanted me to suffer maximum pain.
“When I was sold to Masterson, he figured I’d suffer so much I’d kill the man and then we’d be even. I would no longer be pure. It didn’t work.” He kissed me. “And then…I met you.”
“But you made me think we had to wait for you to swim across the lake and be freed—you lied to me!”
“Of course I did. I couldn’t leave my wolves here unprotected. Now we’re down to three and I trust them not to stray…to turn savage. I love you, Cavan. The fact that you were willing to wait told me everything. I knew I could trust you. I knew this day would come. I knew I’d have to tell you everything, but at least you know it all now. And I no longer feel the burden of protecting the wolves. When each is ready to swim the lake, we’ll help them. In the meantime we’ll keep an eye on them, okay?”
“Okay.” I thought about things for a moment as he began kissing along the neckline of my hospital gown.
“You’re so sexy,” he murmured, “even in crappy blue paper.” His hand slid under the sheet toward the tent I was starting to make under the thin sheet and blanket. “This still works, thank God,” Ludo whispered. He disappeared under the bedding and began to suck my cock. I worried that the door would fly open and we’d be caught.
Then of course I began to worry it would open before he finished what he’d started. I tried to keep my excitement in check but it was hard. His hands were all over me, his talented mouth working hard and fast on me. All my senses quickened. My ass came off the bed with each pull of his tightened lips against my shaft. He sucked me in deeply then slowly drew back, topping my needy cock head with kisses.
He suddenly came off my cock and threw back the bedding. “I feel more questions,” he said, breathing hard now.
“What was the key they were all looking for?” I asked him. “You mentio
ned it to my mom.”
He laughed then. “Don’t you know?”
“No, I don’t.”
“The key is you, Cavan. I love you. That’s what kept me strong. I’m the real fuerte. Loving you stopped me from ever wanting to kill any man. Loving you was…is…my key. Everybody has one. You took your time coming into my life.”
I smiled then. “Was I worth the wait?”
“Fuck yes.” He bent his head and sucked me in again, his fingers reaching under my ass cheek to stroke my hole. I came with such force, I could feel my heart hammering in my chest, my head…my nose, hurting with a fresh surge of pain.
He released me and moved for the pain button again, but I shook my head. Pain was good. Love was good. That was my key.
§ § § §
The day I was promoted to the rank of detective, there was a small ceremony in our division. I was stunned that so many citizens showed up. My mom burst into tears when people applauded her. She’d wanted to walk into the station, and she did, with assists from Felicity and Ludo.
We posed for photos, our little family. Mom, me, Ludo, my sister, her husband and son, Felicity, Harry, and Ky. Of course, Veo put himself in the mix, too.
“It’s gonna look real good for me with the family court that I have a friend who’s a genuine hero,” Harry said. “I’m emailing this to the judge!”
My nephew Max and Ky renewed their friendship, laughing and playing together. I loved how tender Max was with Ky, taking his hands when Ky began wringing them, teaching him a new game. Ky sparkled under Max’s attention.
A few of the guys in our division had grumbled about my promotion when I’d only been in the LAPD a little over a year. Usually the minimum was four. None could argue, however, that I’d helped crack a huge criminal case, even though some of the guys still seemed fuzzy on the details of what my mom was doing in the cave with a nail gun in her hand and a Glock hidden under her shirt.
Some swore that she had shot a wolf with the nail gun. Some said that there were wolves bouncing off the walls…but in the end, she’d lost one son to a vicious, homicidal cabal that had killed more than fourteen people…that we knew of.
The media loved her and wrote stories with headlines like, Granny Get Your Gun. She told everyone who asked her that all women should know how to change the oil on their cars and how to shoot a gun.
“Self-defense is key,” she announced when people asked her at the ceremony. I had an inkling self-defense classes would soon find a spike in their enrollment.
With my years served up in Oregon and my good track record, Sergeant Veo said he felt that I was an asset to the force. Me, I was stoked.
My family went to the Apple Pan for lunch. We took over the place. Mind you, that wasn’t hard. It only had a dozen stools lining the counter and we’d invited Veo and Detectives Fulton and Tripp. We all ordered burgers and fries. Ludo and I sat on either side of the kids.
“This is real good,” Ky pronounced. I almost fell off my stool. The kid was eating a burger. With the works. Felicity nudged me and mouthed thank you. But I credited Ludo, beautiful Ludo, who made no big deal of it as Ky worked to finish his burger as quickly as Max.
§ § § §
My brother had been cremated and his ashes sent to our house a few days after his passing. My mother said my brother seemed happiest at the beach so we’d waited for my ceremony, and then lunch, after which we all set out for Venice Beach. The boys rode in the car with us. Mom had the window seat, but she kept up a hilarious conversation with them about guns and ammo. There wasn’t a thing she didn’t know about weapons. They were seriously riveted.
At the beach near Harry’s house, we took the urn containing Jackson’s ashes and released them to the ocean. I hoped he would find peace in death, renewal in his repose. I watched his ashes fly across the ocean, carried on a late afternoon riptide.
“Let’s go home,” Mom said, her eyes flooding with tears. Ludo and I held her hands and, as we turned, I expected to see the stone wolves atop the gallery. And there they were, but I swear they were smiling at me. The boys ran back to Harry’s house, eager to play Wii games.
We hugged the adults good-bye. Mom, Ludo, and I were leaving for Argentina the following day. In two weeks, I’d be expected on duty and I was excited because Veo had promised Harry he’d do what he could to have him transferred to our division as my new partner.
“I’m going to miss you all,” Felicity said. “Have fun in Argentina. Send us photos!” She turned to the wolves and shook her head. “I swear that’s the wackiest art installation ever. The gallery owner claims he has nothing to do with their shifting and changing…but they haven’t moved for days now.”
Ludo winked at me.
Epilogue
Irazusta, Gualeguaychú, Argentina…
Getting a passport for Ludo from the Argentine consulate in Los Angeles hadn’t been difficult. With my mom and me vouching for him and a notary public witnessing his signature against the driver’s license he was now the proud owner of, he had a consular passport valid for sixty days.
My mom and I were sponsoring his green card application and he had a social security card, driver’s license, and bank account. He was becoming an American. In time, he wanted to be an American citizen.
“I never want to go back to Argentina again,” he told us. He worried about procuring a permanent passport in Argentina since there was no record of his life there, but we assured him it wasn’t necessary. The consular passport would be sufficient. Once we were home there was no reason for any of us to leave again.
He had qualms about being separated from us on his way out of the U.S. since non-citizens had separate lines, but his passport had been stamped and he was legally allowed to return to the U.S. on a humanitarian visa, owing to his long recuperation from his attack. Once we were back on U.S. soil, his immigration attorney would activate his green card application.
We arrived on a cold, frosty spring day in Buenos Aires. I’d forgotten their seasons were the opposite of ours. It was an incredible sight to see the city in the grip of a frosty morning as our plane descended. We rented a car, and Ludo and I took turns driving north.
The countryside was gorgeous, simply amazing. The day warmed up and we stopped at many roadside places so Mom and I could taste the kind of food Ludo had long missed. We angled east, and Ludo mentioned we were close to the border of Paraguay. The area was quiet, rooted somehow to me in dense secrecy. This was no tourist destination.
In the province of Gualeguaychú, we stopped in his hometown of Irazusta, population three hundred and fifty.
He cried when he saw that his former home had been turned into an orphanage. He cried for his lost best friend, for his life.
Just before dusk, Mom, Ludo and I visited the grave of Ludo’s mother. My mom was having a hard time working up sympathy for a woman who’d sold her son into sexual slavery so many years ago. Hard to fathom that this kind of cruelty wasn’t new—and that it still continued all over the world. Parents abused their kids, some killed them. But Ludo wanted to bid her a final farewell.
We left her wildflowers in a jar. Lots of flowers…since nobody had brought her any for many years, nor would they be likely to again in the foreseeable future. For Ludo, forgiveness for her, Agata Vitória Suarez, was important.
“Everything in life is built on sand,” he said. “Nothing, really, is built on stone, but we have to build as if the sand were stone…that’s a famous saying here in Argentina.”
Our drive was punctuated by endless mountains, rivers and low-lying bodies of water. And then we came to his lake.
We got out of the car with him.
“It’s smaller than I remembered.” He stared across the blue-gray expanse of water. His teeth chattered with fear but we hugged him, taking possession of his clothes and shoes. I wanted to feel the water temperature but he freaked out.
“Don’t you dare!”
“Are you sure this is the right side of the lake?”
Mom asked.
“Positive.”
“Good. Because I’m not coming back in another nine years,” she cracked.
He hugged and kissed us both and dived into the water.
Mom tugged my hand. “He’s got a nice big dick. No wonder you always look so damned happy!”
I laughed. I pushed her wheelchair around the water’s edge. I worried about mutant crocodiles…serial killers…who knew what in that body of water? But he made the swim across and we were right there waiting for him. I held out my hand to him. He was frozen.
There was no music, no special crack of thunder, celestial bells or harps…nothing to mark his transformation, but I knew. He was human. I’d never felt his body so cold before. Mom held up the towel to him. He dried off and dressed and then we went looking for the small bed and breakfast we’d booked our rooms at.
Señora Maria, who owned the hundred-year-old farmhouse was as taken by my man as everybody else was. She had been worried about us since we were so late, but she’d kept supper waiting. I was ecstatic to discover it was locro, the hearty stew Ludo made often for Mom and me. It was good but not as good as Ludo’s. Not that we mentioned this.
She asked us a lot of questions, surprised when Ludo said he had relatives from this area.
“I know everybody,” she said. “Who?”
He mentioned a man’s name.
“That boy’s family went crazy when he vanished.” Her voice dropped. “I heard he swam the lake…you know, the one by the Aguapey River—” Ludo translated all of this to us. “And he became a werewolf! But he’s gone…and so is his family.”
She lamented that we were here now and not in December during the height of summer and the region’s carnivale.
No…we would be home, back where we belonged. Señora Maria, whom my mom had found via the Argentine consulate back in LA, seemed to become instant pals. They both loved bananas but Señora Maria had never heard of a banana label in her life. Food to her came from her farm or somebody else’s. What did this mean, a banana label?
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