But now that she was standing on Erin’s doorstep, everything she’d been trying to ignore came flooding back. Sure, it was a doorstep in front of a porch door with some peeling white paint on it, not unlike her own. The house even looked a bit like hers, except with dark green trim instead of white. There were a few other differences, too; maybe she should just stand here awhile and think about them.
Her imagination took flight, circling in all directions, noticing dozens of things she’d never noticed before. But when she thought she saw several of the neighbors change into wolves as they mowed their lawns, Becca shook her head to clear it and rang the doorbell. Whatever was waiting for her on the other side couldn’t be any crazier than what was going on in her head.
Erin pulled the door open and gave her a lazy smile. “Hi there. C’mon in.”
Becca followed her somersaulting stomach inside, wondering if Erin had known how long it had taken before she worked up the nerve to ring the bell. For a minute, she looked everywhere except at Erin and it was as if she was seeing her neighbor’s house for the first time. Had the rug always been that pattern of dark reds and blacks? Suddenly it looked like blood spilt on the polished hardwood floor. And that framed painting of the wolves–was that their Pack? Or just regular wolves?
Erin shut the door behind her and reached down to take the bag of Chinese take-out. “Thanks for doing this. Cooking’s still a chore with my arm like this.” She moved the sling, the gesture startling Becca into looking straight at her.
The hallway was dim in the twilight and Erin’s eyes shone silver for a moment. Becca could almost see the ghostly shape of pointed, furry ears above her short-cropped gray-brown hair. “Is it always going to be like this?” She closed her eyes and rubbed her hands over her face.
Erin patted her shoulder and herded her toward the kitchen. “You’ll be sensitive to the moon phases for awhile. But it gets better with practice, I promise.”
Becca groaned in disbelief as she pulled out a chair from the table and dropped into it. “This is all too much to take in at once. Why can’t I just have the same kind of menopause everyone else has? Or just friggin’ Ed and his lawyer trying to take my house? Instead of all of it with a topping of turning into a monster on moonlit nights.” She remembered who she was talking to and her stomach twisted. “Cool, useful monsters, of course.”
“Just lucky, I guess.” Erin put the food on the table. “Seriously, do you think we all had it easy? Just took the whole thing in stride when we started changing? Shelly took it as a birthright, sure, but Pete was really freaked out. Gladys wouldn’t talk to anyone for six months, just kept to herself and thought she was going nuts. I—” she stopped abruptly and pulled some plates out of the cabinet.
Becca got up and looked around for utensils and mugs, settling for taking the clean ones out of the drain. Erin had turned away and was looking out the window into the backyard like it was the most interesting view in the world.
Becca wondered what to do, what to say. It wasn’t like she knew Erin that well. What if there was some terrible story about her change, one that would make it impossible for Becca to be friends with her? She wouldn’t befriend a real monster, not now, not ever. She promised herself that, hoping she wasn’t lying to herself, while she opened up the cardboard containers and waited for Erin to turn around.
When she did, it was to pour out some ice water into the mugs and hand one to Becca. She still wasn’t looking up when she sat down. “Look,” Becca said finally, “whatever you did can’t be that bad. I hope.” She tried to smile like she was kidding but she could feel her lips trembling. Then she braced herself for whatever was coming next.
“I had myself committed after I changed. Spent nearly a month over at Pleasant Oaks Psychiatric in Eastfork before Shelly found about it and dragged my doped up ass out of there. She got to me just before the next full moon. Can you imagine what kind of carnage there would have been if she hadn’t?” Erin shuddered. “All those helpless folks locked up with an honest to God werewolf.”
“But you can control it. You wouldn’t have killed any of those people,” Becca said indignantly.
“Really?” Erin’s eyes were definitely glinting silver now, even under the kitchen’s fluorescent lights. Her face seemed to be getting longer, fuzzier while Becca watched her. Something rose in the shadows of her collar and a soft growl found its way up from Becca’s throat, leaping past her lips before she could stop it. She clapped her hands to her mouth and stared at Erin, eyes wide. Erin’s lip curled and she snarled back.
Becca felt herself start to respond, to change, and she jumped to her feet. “Stop it! I mean it! You made your point. You’re a monster, I’m a monster. None of us can really control this, not all the time.” She stood over Erin and gasped for breath as she fought against the madness swirling through her.
Erin sat back and exhaled slowly as if she was letting all the wolf go with each breath. “You just did. Control it I mean. I couldn’t do that right after I first started to change. So yes, I might have killed a few of those folks up at the Oaks. It wouldn’t have been anything personal, mind you. Just about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Becca dropped back into her chair as her legs gave out. “Why didn’t you stop me from going to Mountainview?”
“Well, it wasn’t like you left a note or anything. We didn’t know where you’d gone. Shelly took off to check out your ex’s place in between trips to check on her mom and I went through every campground in the woods around here. We made a list of anyone we knew that you knew who lived somewhere else and tried to get in touch with them. Apparently, you hadn’t mentioned the Mountainview relatives to Shelly in quite a while.”
“She thought I went to chew Ed’s face off? Funny, that’s what I thought you two meant back at the office.”
“He does seem to bring that out in you. And I’m not saying he might not deserve it.” Erin smiled.
Becca felt herself getting angry all over again. Why was her life the only open book around here? Stupid Ed. “Speaking of families, where’s yours? Why no ex-husband, kids, parents? You never mention them.”
“I killed them all during a bad moonrise a couple of years back.” Erin’s matter-of-fact tone froze Becca in place until she rolled her eyes. “No ex-husband. I’m a lesbian, Becca. Have been since I came out as a teenager. My last partner is living with her new wife out on the East Coast. We never had kids and my parents died a few years back.”
“Oh.” The word hung there between them until Becca reached out and picked up a container of Chinese food. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Which part? Me being a dyke, breaking up with my ex or the parents?”
“Your parents, but I guess your ex too.” Becca concentrated on scooping rice out of the box, focusing a bit harder than she meant to. If Erin was a lesbian and if she kept having all those weird feelings about her, did that mean that she was one too? She tried to remember everything she’d ever seen about coming out on Oprah while a tiny voice inside screamed, Not that too!
“And I’ve found a complete conversation killer. Look, it’s not contagious. Spending time with me won’t make you queer. Shelly’s held up just fine despite my terribly charismatic and corrupting presence. Ditto most of the other members of the club.” Erin sighed and Becca looked up.
“I guess…” Becca stumbled over the words, gauging her feelings. After all, this was hardly the craziest thing that had happened to her recently. “I guess I kinda suspected it, now that I stop and think about it. Honestly, I’m just so freaked about everything right now that it doesn’t rate that highly on my personal Disastermeter.”
“Do you have an actual personal Disastermeter?” Erin grinned at her.
“I do lately. So speaking of Shelly, how do you two know each other? Honestly, it’s like I just met you all, which I guess is true. I feel like I’ve got no idea about what’s going on around me.”
“I was born here, right outside town
and down the valley a bit. Shelly and I went to good old Howling High together. We were both on the basketball team one of the years that the girls went to State so we had a lot of time to get to know each other. I moved away for a time, then came back, then moved away again. But it’s a hard place to leave, and I got pulled back in. We stayed in touch, what between one thing and another.” Erin shrugged and took up a forkful of sweet-and-sour pork.
“Did you know about the wolves back then? And what’s Howling High?”
“Oh, sorry. It’s what the kids around here call Wolf’s Point High School, kind of an in-group joke. The football team is the Timberwolves and all the other teams have wolf-related names. So yes, a few of us knew a bit about the wolves and the curse, or at least we thought we did.”
“It’s a curse now?”
“Think of it as a mixed blessing. We get to live in Wolf’s Point as part of the Pack and we get to keep the valley’s magic alive. That’s the wonderful, powerful aspect of it. We also get to turn into wolves one night a month and keep doing it until we get worn out. Not to mention fighting with slayers in training and the occasional meth dealer who wants to move into the area.” Erin gestured with her sling. “Now what can I tell you that will make you more comfortable with all this?”
Becca opened her mouth, then closed it again. There was so much that she wanted to know, had to know. It was hard to know where to start, even harder to concentrate on everything Erin was telling her. She tuned out for a few moments while Erin kept talking, just letting the words wash over her. Erin’s voice was pleasant in her wolf-enhanced ears, neither too shrill nor earth-rumbling deep.
Then the phone rang, its chirp startlingly loud on the shelf above Becca’s head. She jumped, banging her head, then almost did it again when Erin reached over her head to pick it up. She scooted her chair out of the way and tried to sit quietly, breathing in her neighbor’s scent. It was a mix of laundry soap and clean skin with a hint of sweat underneath.
Becca found herself wanting to reach out and touch the faded denim of her shirt or maybe the worn fabric of her jeans. She sat on her hands instead, trying to politely ignore the conversation Erin was having about two feet away.
She started with a quick look at the walls. Erin’s framed copy of the “Serenity Prayer” caught her eye. If ever there was a time to accept the things she couldn’t change, this was probably it. Interesting, though; she wondered if Erin had been in a twelve-step program or just found the prayer comforting. Maybe she’d work up the nerve to ask when her neighbor got off the phone.
She glanced away from it to the calendar next to it; Amelia Earhart stared back. That figured. Becca smiled a little and found her attention wandering back to her neighbor.
She studied Erin from the corner of her eye, much the way she’d been listening to her voice. She wanted to see her neighbor whole and entire from her graying hair and long, square-jawed face down to her narrow feet sheathed in faded plaid slippers. There was a small zit on the side of her jaw and one of her front teeth was crooked. The arm without the cast had a long white scar down it.
Becca wondered how Erin stayed lean and muscular while she herself had moved into spherical softness with middle age. She envied that a bit, along with the other woman’s easy, athletic movements. She’d have to ask what her neighbor did to work out once she got off the phone. With any luck, it was all due to running around as a wolf and Becca wouldn’t have to add anything extreme, like marathon running or powerlifting, to her short list of hobbies.
Then Erin’s voice pitched up. “What the hell? On fire?”
Becca snapped back out of her fantasies and stared anxiously at Erin while she waited for the call to end. Then Erin clicked the phone off with a brusque “We’re on our way.” She put the phone back in the charger and stared down at Becca. “It’s the Women’s Club. Shelly just got there and she says it’s on fire.”
Chapter 12
~
This time, they took Becca’s car and her tires squealed as she spun them out through the streets, then onto the gravel road leading to the Women’s Club. “Did Shelly say how bad it was?” Becca couldn’t stop herself from asking, even though the question felt silly once she heard it out loud. Like there’s good arson. If it was arson.
“Bad enough. Even worse if it’s got anything to do with the Nesters. That would mean they suspect who the wolves are and then we’re all vulnerable.” Erin rubbed her hand over her eyes and stared bleakly out the window.
Now that was a fun thought. Becca wondered what the consequences might be for all of the Pack if everyone in town knew what was going on. A vision of silver bullets, mental wards and life in jail didn’t make her feel very joyous about the future.
That in turn set her to wondering whether or not ancient magic could be cured with modern medicine. They could treat bubonic plague, why not werewolfery? Maybe they could find something to fix this before her worries came true.
That was when they came around the curve in the road and all fantasies about the future, good and bad, were erased from Becca’s mind. They could see smoke billowing above the trees and every now and then a lick of flame shooting skyward into the night sky. Smoke filled the road and the clearing ahead.
When they pulled into the end of the drive, the building was a huge fireball in the clearing ahead of them. Becca could feel Erin’s anger coming off her like a summer-hot sidewalk. She could feel her own rage build in answer. This was theirs, their territory, their home. If this was the work of Oya and the Nesters, it was a declaration of war.
The Wolf’s Point fire trucks, all two of them, were out in front of the building and the volunteer firefighters were struggling with lengths of heaving hoses and spraying water.
Becca parked the car on the road away from the main site, pulling far over to the side to make room for any more trucks and emergency vehicles that might show up. Then she and Erin piled out of the car and raced down the road as fast as they could to where Shelly and Lizzie and a bunch of other folks were shoveling dirt and sand onto the outer reaches of the fire to try and contain it.
Becca grabbed a shovel and pitched in where there was a break in the semi-circle. Behind her, Erin began filling up a couple of empty buckets from the spring, hauling them to the fire’s edge one-handed. Becca could hear Sheriff Henderson on the radio somewhere nearby, calling in help from the other towns. There was a crunch of gravel on the road and then Mrs. Hui and her son and daughter joined the line. After that, another carload of women who she vaguely recognized, and another, families in tow, arrived.
Becca nodded to them and kept shoveling. Her mind kept turning back to the night that she’d changed for the first time, right here in the Women’s Club. She shuddered and tried to make herself remember happier times there instead: the book clubs and the birthday parties. But it was all overshadowed with her memory of her first change.
She still recognized that the building was more than her remembered terrors. It was, she realized for the first time, the main common meeting ground between the Pack and the normal human women of the town. Where else did they all socialize together? What were they going to do without it?
She tried not to look up, tried not to see the flames leaping treetop-high above them, rapidly eating away at the building. Looking up would just make it all seem more hopeless. As it was, she could feel the anger and anxiety rippling down the line of volunteers like a live wire. The Pack was losing its main home; she knew that in her bones, even though she’d never thought of the club that way before.
And they were losing. That much she could see when she finally did raise her eyes from the shovel, startled by the sound of the crash when the roof collapsed. The women and men wavered in their shoveling, most looking up at the building as a long shuddering sigh went through the clearing. The firefighters gave the flames one last listless spray, drowning most of them, too late. There was silence as they all looked at the pile of blackened ash, still sparking wires and tiny flames that managed
to stay alive despite the wet.
Becca glanced around the group, stopping when she saw Shelly’s face. In the two years that she’d known her boss, she’d always had trouble reading Shelly’s thoughts from her expression. Now she shivered a bit as the wind picked up and she watched Shelly nearly glow with fury. Her eyes snapped and crackled almost as much as the dying flames and her jaw was clenched just below her thinning lips. For an instant, the wolf glowed in the air around her like a cape.
Becca broke out of the line and walked over to her. Maybe it was an accident. That was what she wanted to say. A rogue lightning strike or an electrical failure, something ordinary. But that felt like a lie and those words wouldn’t come. They vanished utterly when Lizzie walked up with an empty gas canister in her gloved hand. She and Shelly exchanged unreadable looks and Becca shut her eyes for a moment. No accident then, and no hope of peace returning to the valley any time soon.
She wondered who had done it and where the Pack’s wrath would fall. It might have been a stupid high school prank gone awry. But she couldn’t imagine any of the local kids doing something like this. Of course, lately she’d been feeling like her imagination was a little limited.
“Who could have done something like this?” It was Gladys who finally broke the near silence. Even the firefighters and the radio chatter on the sheriff’s car seemed muted.
Shelly looked around, her expression fierce in the dim light. “We’ll find out.” Her tone was so heavy with unspoken consequences that it dropped like lead into the quiet.
That was when a flash of movement out by the woods on the far side of the mound of smoldering ash caught Becca’s eye. She squinted a little, trying to see through the smoke. Somebody was standing there but she had trouble seeing more than just the outline of the person’s body. Then the figure stepped forward just a bit, or maybe the wind moved the leaves aside, letting the weak moonlight shine down to illuminate where he or she was standing.
Silver Moon (A Women of Wolf's Point Novel) Page 9