by Dana Cameron
My growl turned to a whine. My tail wagged, involuntarily, and I paced a step or two, uncertain of what I was seeing, of what to do. They were just like me, and they couldn’t be.
Maybe this is it, I thought. Maybe this is where I finally unspool. This is where the world goes crazy and I wake up in the rubber room.
“Zoe,” the wolf-man said, and my ears pricked up.
He reeked of Beastliness and he could speak. Holy shit, he knew my name.
“Zoe, there’s no need to worry. We just want to talk to you. You can trust us.”
I shook my wolfy head.
“You need to know what you are.” He nodded to another figure behind me. I turned to see the fifth, a human man, emerging from the tree line, removing a glove carefully as he negotiated his way around the headstones. “Download, if you’d be so kind?”
“This won’t hurt a bit.” Before I could move, the man put his hand on the back of my neck. That’s when the movie started.
As I stared, frozen, images played out in front of me. No sound, no words, but impressions accompanied them.
A variety of artifacts from around the world with transformed humans, wolf, or snake imagery seemed to suggest the long history of these creatures among humans. Some of them I recognized, like the Egyptian god Anubis, the caduceus of Asklepios, Hindi nagas, ouroboros, the Norse image of Fenrir. Other images were totally unfamiliar to me. But the one common theme was images of monsters—wolves, giant snakes, and every shape in between—attacking humans.
No, not simply attacking. Making the world better. Tracking and killing murderers, rapists, evildoers. But the viciousness of it all—
It was too much. I shook off his hand, backed away. They were exactly what my mother had warned me about, but she’d never said anything about wolf-men.
“I know you’re confused, Zoe. You must trust us. What Download showed you, that’s just the merest surface.”
Trust was not in my vocabulary, or the Beast’s. I moved a few steps, then backed up, uncertain.
“Let us help you—”
The two behind me tensed, ready to fight.
I bunched, ready to leap over them. I was drenched, my clothes and fur were matted down. There was no way I’d get away. At least I’d given Sean a chance.
The snake-man went on point; the others followed him, sniffing at the air.
I sniffed, too. I recognized the smell without being able to identify it, until I remembered the night at the cinema. I felt ill. Something wicked was out there and I had the insane urge to do something about it. Fix it, make it right.
One of the wolves howled, making me shiver. The two wolves and the wolf-man tore off away from me, but also away from Sean.
I had the worst urge to go with them. If it hadn’t been for the cookie tin, and my need to guard it, I’m sure the Beast would have carried me off with them. I wanted to run, chase whatever they were after, and be there for the kill—
If the snake-man hadn’t spat just then, breaking the thought, I would have gone.
He hissed. “You’re becoming a problem, stray.”
With that, he melted into the rain and mist, following the others, making no sound at all.
Goddamn.
I stood, confused, angry, and thwarted. I waited a few minutes to make sure they were really gone, then resumed my human form. It was one of the easy times; I was so tired, it just sort of happened.
I found my shoes, put them on, and headed for the car. I hoped Sean was still there.
Every kid dreams they have a secret family, I thought as I trudged across the wet gravel pathways. It was just my shitty luck that I actually had a secret family full of threatening, dickhead monsters.
Chapter 4
Sean was in the car. He had it turned on and was ready to tear out as soon as I appeared. I was glad for the heater; the spring rain was freezing and I was soaked.
“What about those guys? Who were they?”
I thought about the one with the Harley T-shirt, the one who’d shown up in Salem and then Boston. “I didn’t get any names. But definitely my father’s people.” I shuddered. “I was mostly running. Not a lot of talking.”
We drove until we found a coffee shop, but then sat in the parking lot. I wasn’t going to open the tin in public.
Under the dim yellow light of the overhead, I pulled the tape off the lid, brushing bits of roots and dirt from it. My hands were clammy; the cold of the metal didn’t help. With the last of the tape gone, I slid my fingernails under the lid and pulled: no luck.
Rustle of cloth, followed by a sharp click: Sean handed me the screwdriver on his knife.
Nodding, I turned the tin over and jammed the screwdriver under the lid. Two good whacks and it started to move. I chased the loose edge around until the top came off with a grating noise and a shower of disintegrating metal.
Inside a sealed baggie was a swaddled package. I unwrapped several meters of plastic wrap until I uncovered a plain mailing envelope with a clasp closure, yellowed paper faintly discolored by foxing around the edges.
I unfolded it, and in my mother’s handwriting was my name and a date, from six months ago. The date of her diagnosis with brain cancer.
I ripped off the top. Inside was a smaller, sealed envelope, addressed to me, which I was not about to open in front of Sean; I stuck it into my pocket for later. The rest was a collection of photos that slipped out in a cascade across my lap. A sheaf of yellow legal pad paper was folded in half.
Somehow, I wasn’t as concerned about Sean seeing these, even when I saw the images on the photos. If this had anything to do with the Beast, surely Ma would have told me before she died.
I had come to the conclusion she didn’t know anything about my personal problem.
The photographs were hard to look at. There were a dozen, all told, from what looked like crime scenes. Murders—maybe two, maybe three different cases.
They weren’t tidy deaths, like in an Agatha Christie book, where the body would be artistically sprawled on the library carpet, a glass of poisoned wine spilled alongside. These were bad deaths in dark places: a badly lit alley, a storeroom, a basement. The bodies were torn apart with a viciousness difficult to fathom.
I don’t know what kept me studying them, but I did. My stomach was in a knot, but otherwise I was dispassionate. Sean had gone green and sweaty.
Shuffling the photos, I saw they all were blurry, dark, and taken in haste. Amateurish. They showed the bodies fully, emphasis on the wounds. There were numbers on all of them, one through ten, in the same hand.
The first sheet listed numbers I assumed corresponded with the photographs. There were dates and place names, none of which I recognized, all from before I was born.
“That,” Sean said, looking at a nearly decapitated body, “is one hundred percent fucked up.”
“Welcome to my world. I guess this is why she didn’t want me near my father’s family.” I wondered privately: Had Ma somehow had a baby with a werewolf? That brand of mayhem looked all too familiar. Is that what I was destined for? I remembered the urge to run with the others from the cemetery, to do…what? It made me ill to think of it.
“What now? You’re not going to go—?”
“Not to the police, no. I have no idea what this is, and I don’t want to know.” I realized after the last interlude, I wanted to put as much distance as possible between me and my father’s family—which now had a whole new twisted meaning for me. “I’m leaving, Sean. Tonight.”
“But what about—?” He pulled the wallet out of his pocket. “You can find out more about them, maybe even your father now.”
I took the wallet, went through it: license, some cash, a couple of credit cards, all in a name I didn’t recognize. I shoved it into my bag.
“The more I see of those guys, the less I like.” I wasn’t about to stick around and let them tell Sean—or anyone else—about what I was. “It’s safer this way.”
“At least let me try and t
alk you out of it over a cup of coffee. I’m still soaked.”
I nodded. We hadn’t eaten and I was ravenous.
We went in, and I plugged in my phone to charge. There was a text from Danny waiting for me.
I’m back home now. Call me!!!
I could tell from the number of exclamation points just how anxious Danny was, but I hesitated, not wanting to draw danger to him, too.
It was just a phone call, I told myself as I hit speed dial.
“It’s me,” I said when he picked up.
“Zoe, I’m so sorry. I tried to get back early, for the funeral, but I got delayed and missed the connection. I’m so sorry.”
“Danny, it’s OK.” I had a lump in my throat. “Thank you for trying.”
“What are you going to do now?”
Danny was worried about me, but I couldn’t tell him about the tin and the photos, that Ma’s warnings had been about something even worse than violent in-laws.
On the other hand, if someone looking for me knew enough to look for Sean—or Will—they might find their way to Danny. I’d be damned if I’d let that happen. Sean could take care of himself, I knew.
I was never so sure about Danny. Danny had started out college in history, then went to anthropology, then ended up with a degree in linguistics, which I thought was even less practical than art history. But he found himself a nice job doing computational linguistics for a software startup, and actually had a job with benefits, which was more than I could currently say for myself.
Now that I thought of it, Danny was doing OK. Maybe I worried about him to keep from worrying about myself.
“I think it’s fair to say I discovered some of Ma’s concerns have some basis in reality,” I said finally. “In fact, you might want to keep an eye out. They’ve been…reaching out, looking for me.”
“Zoe, where are you? Please. We need to talk.”
“Look, I’ll send you an e-mail when I get…wherever I’m going.”
“Zoe.”
I don’t know how he did it, but he managed to freight the two syllables of my name with history, guilt, and obligation. He knew as much as anyone why we’d been on the run, or as much of the made-up story my mother told anyone about why we kept moving. Yes, there was the year we’d spent sleeping on the pull-out sofa in his mother’s tiny apartment, and there was a summer where Ma and I would have missed any number of meals if his mother hadn’t invited us over regularly. I kind of thought the month he spent with us while his mother looked for a new job made up for it, but I know it didn’t, not really. Not when my father’s people might be on his trail.
“I’m not far,” I said. I’d realized there were no documents, like the lease at BU, to tie Danny and me together. Our lives had been in parallel for some time now. The risk was there, but it was low. And I missed him. “I could stop by. But I am leaving tonight.”
Where would I go besides…away?
“Stay with me, for just a few days.”
“I can’t.”
“Just come over to my place. Please? Just for a drink or something?”
I thought about it, trying to tell myself that I would tell him just enough to put him on guard. It was more likely the threat would evaporate as soon as I took off. “Sean’s with me—”
“All the more reason,” he said. “You need Homo sapiens sapiens advice, not Neanderthal advice. See you both soon.” He hung up.
I turned to Sean. “I’m going to stop by Danny’s before I leave. You don’t have to come.”
“Like hell I don’t. Who knows who else is waiting for you out there?”
“Sean, it’s Cambridge. A city dense with responsible do-gooders, as well as campus and local police. The best place to hide out from people is in a crowd.”
He shook his head. “Maybe Danny can talk you into forming a reasonable plan before you take off.”
I felt better as soon as I saw Danny framed in the doorway of his brick apartment building. I felt genuinely happy for the first time in ages. Not much taller than me, maybe five-eight, and lighter than me by ten pounds, Danny’s is the picture you see in the dictionary under “geek,” “dweeb,” and “nerd.” Or maybe it would have been ten years ago; despite the glasses, the pale skin of the habitually nocturnal, and the curly dark hair perennially in need of a cut, once Danny had found his niche, he’d grown a confidence that was rare in anyone.
The bond Danny and I had was strong enough to last when I fell in love with Will and moved in with him and Sean. It had outlasted Will.
I knew I had to keep my distance, though, so the Beast and its kin wouldn’t jeopardize him.
But I settled into that hug, feeling a weight come off me for the first time in I don’t know when.
“What do you need?” he said.
Rather than argue with him, I said, “Strong drink, something to eat. In exactly that order.” I suddenly felt epically tired and wanted to crash. I could barely see straight and didn’t want to drive. I had no idea where I was going, anyway. “Um, and if you’ll still have me, a place to stay. Just for tonight.”
Danny knew me too well. He raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“Can Sean stay, too?”
“Oh.” He looked past me, into the night. “Where is he?”
“With my stuff. Just wanted to make sure you were fine with me bringing him along.”
“Love me, love my dog?”
“Danny.”
Danny sighed. “Fine, sure, whatever.”
I whistled sharply; Sean came around the corner with my backpack.
The two eyed each other before they extended their hands. Lines had been drawn when I split with Will and they hadn’t seen each other in some time.
“Sean.”
“Danny.”
“Can we get inside?” I said. I was still dripping wet. “I’m freezing.”
We climbed to the second floor. Inside, Danny dug out a beer, which he handed wordlessly to Sean, and a bottle of vodka, which he kept on hand for me. We ordered Chinese, and while we waited for the delivery, I brought him up to speed, stopping just shy of discovering the Beast’s new kin.
“So, yeah, they’re real,” I finished, trying not to think about the pictures in the tin. “I got a look at them a couple of times. At home, Boston, and the cemet—and more recently.”
Sean nodded. “I beat the shit out of three of them after Zoe jumped out my window.”
Danny thought about that, and nodded back. “Good. Zoe, what’s next?”
“I’m not sure. I’m going to head out of here, try and lose them. I’ve got a choice between New York and Providence, thanks to Ian, so I can get a job someplace crowded.” I shook my head. “I’ll decide which tomorrow.”
I had a plan in place as soon as Ma got really sick. But somehow making that last choice seemed like too much to ask before the funeral, and now I hated that I finally had to decide.
The food arrived; we ate and talked. Tension eased somewhat, and it was almost like the three of us were back to normal. Danny and Sean covered the familiar territory of Star Trek: The Next Generation versus the movie reboot of Star Trek, and I relaxed only when Danny offered to agree to disagree.
Sleep settled in on me as they argued. It had been a long day, and I still had something left to explore. Danny showed me to the guest room. That’s how far Danny had come in life: he had a real guest room with a bed, not just a futon.
“We can talk more tomorrow, after you get some sleep,” he said, handing me clean towels. “I’ll work at home.”
“You don’t have to.”
He shrugged. “’Course I do. Don’t worry about it.” He hugged me briefly. “G’night, Zoe. I’m glad you came.”
“Me, too.”
Revived and calmer, I closed the door, then pulled out the smaller envelope from the tin. I stared at Ma’s handwriting for what seemed a long time. Then I sat on the bed, opened it, and began to read.
Dear Zoe,
I love you. That’s probably
not enough for what you’re about to learn, but if you’re reading this, I’m gone. That’s my last wish, that you know that you were the most important thing in my life. You didn’t have the childhood I would have chosen, but you grew into the adult I always wanted to know, so I can leave believing I did my best. That’s a lot. The only other thing I have is the truth, as best I know it, about my early life and what I learned about your father.
I ran away from the home when I was fifteen. I was raised in an asylum that was probably for orphans, but seemed like it was at least half lunatics as well. Some kids raved and hollered, some just sat in the corner and stared, harmless enough, most of them. But no matter how bad they were, they were always worse—mute and a little dead behind the eyes—after they received the treatment. That was what decided me; when I found myself hearing whispers when there was no one there, I decided I could live with voices better than electroshock therapy, or drugs, or whatever they did to those other kids. I took off in the middle of the night, hitchhiked to the first bus station, and chose a destination based on the amount of money I stole from the petty cash behind the desk.
I’d asked the teachers about my parents a couple of times and got variations on “car crash” and “somewhere up north.” New England or New York, maybe? Vague, but possibly true, so I don’t know who my people really were. The lady I called your grandmother—I left this at her grave. She was a good friend to me, but no relation. I thought you could do with a grandmother, even if it was only for a few years. I’m sorry; I hope the slight lie of blood is outweighed by the kindness she showed you and me both.
So that’s me.
Your father, I thought he was it. I thought we were forever. He seemed to understand me, didn’t push me or rush me. We met when I was waitressing, and he kept coming back for coffee, which I later realized he hated. For a few years, we were a couple, and it was bliss for me.
You probably get that I might have had problems with trusting folks, but when he told me he worked as an insurance claims adjuster, I believed him. But I knew he wasn’t telling me the whole truth: claims adjusters don’t get calls in the middle of the night and come home covered in blood.