“You’ll wait?” I said.
“He’s got to come out sometime. Though, if he gives an interview to one of the guys, I swear I’ll-”
The door opened, and one of the trainers leaned out to speak a few words with the guard.
“Is who here? Her? Really?” the guard said, glancing at Larson. Grudgingly, he stood back from the open door. “He’s asking for you. Come on in.”
I stuck close to Larson as she slipped through the door, while the guard held back the rest of the reporters, most of whom were protesting loudly.
Male locker room. There’s no other smell like it. Lots and lots of sweat, new and old, stale, baked into the flat carpet, into the paint on the walls. And adrenaline, like someone had aerosolized it. Like someone had lit a scented candle of it. Pure, concentrated, competitive maleness. Wolf didn’t know whether to howl or whine.
“This way,” the trainer said, and guided us through the front, a brightly lit area filled with lockers, to a smaller, darker side room with only one light in the corner turned on.
The smell of alcohol almost overpowered the smell of maleness here. It looked like an infirmary. Cabinets with clear doors held gauze, cotton balls, bandages, and dozens of bottles. On a padded massage table in the middle of the room sat Jerome Macy.
A shadow in the dim light, he smelled of sweat, adrenaline, maleness-and wolf. His eyes were a deep, rich brown. I could almost see the wolf in them, sizing me up. Challenging me. I didn’t meet his gaze, didn’t give him any aggressive signals. This was his territory. I was the visitor here, and I didn’t have anything to prove.
“It’s okay, Frank,” Macy said to the trainer, who lingered by the door. The man gave a curt nod, then left, closing the door behind him.
So not even Macy’s trainers knew. The three of us were alone in the room, with the secret.
His hands were raw, chapped, swollen. Tape bound his wrists. He leaned on his knees and let the limbs dangle. Werewolves had rapid healing, but he’d still taken a beating. Macy kept his challenging stare focused on me. I started to bristle under the attention. I crossed my arms and lurked.
Larson drew a small digital recorder out of her pocket and made a show of turning it on. “Mr. Macy. Is it true that you’re infected with the recently identified disease known as lycanthropy?”
His gaze shifted from me to her. After a moment, he chuckled. “It’s not going to do me any good to say no, is it? You planned this out pretty good.”
He was almost soft-spoken. His voice was hushed, belying the power of his body. It gave him a calculating air. Not all brute force, this guy. I wanted to warn Larson, Don’t underestimate him.
“I think the public has a right to know,” Larson said. “Don’t you?”
He considered. Sizing her up, like a hunter deciding whether this prey would be worth the effort, gazing at her through half-lidded eyes. He was making a challenge: the stare, the shoulders, the slight snarl to his open lips, showing teeth-all pointed to the aggressive stance. I recognized it. There was no way fully-human Larson could. For all her journalist’s instincts, she wouldn’t recognize the body language.
He said, “What would I have to pay you to keep you quiet?”
I was betting he couldn’t have said anything that would make her more angry. She said, “Bribery. Real nice. Be smart about this, Macy: you can’t suppress this. You can’t keep this quiet forever. You might as well let me break the story. I’ll give you a chance to have your say, tell your side.”
She approached this the way she would any other stubborn interview; she turned on her own aggressiveness, glaring back, stepping forward into his space. Exactly the wrong response if she wanted him to open up.
The boxer didn’t flinch. His expression never changed. He was still on the hunt. He said, “Then what would I have to do to keep you quiet?”
That threw Larson off her script. She blinked with some amount of astonishment. “Are you threatening me?”
I stepped between them, trying to forestall what the press would call an “unfortunate incident.” Glancing between them, I tried to be chipper, happy, and tail-waggy.
“Jerome! May I call you Jerome?” I said, running my mouth like always. “I’m really glad Jenna asked me to come along for this. Normally I wouldn’t give boxing a second thought. But this. I’d never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. How do you do it? Why don’t you shape-shift when you’re in the ring?”
I had seen animals in cages at the zoo look like this. Quiet, glaring. Simmering. Like a predator who was prepared to wait forever for that one day, that one minute you forgot to lock the cage. On that day, God help you.
“You’re Kitty Norville, right? I’ve heard about you.”
“Great!” I said, my bravado false. “Nothing bad, I hope. So are you going to answer my question?”
He straightened a little, rolled his shoulders, and the mood was broken, the predator image slipped away. His lip turned in a half smile.
“I think about my hands,” he said. Which seemed strange. I must have looked bemused, because he explained, “I have to punch. I can only do that with human hands. Fists and arms. Not claws, not teeth. So I think about my hands. But Kitty-just because I don’t shift doesn’t mean I don’t change.” Some of that animal side bled into his gaze. He must have carried all his animal fighting instinct into the ring.
That was creepy. I had an urge to slouch, grovel, stick an imaginary tail between my legs. Please don’t hurt me…
“So you do have an unfair advantage?” Larson said.
“I use what I have,” he said. “I use my talents, like anyone else out there.”
“But it’s not a level playing field,” she said, pressing. “Tell me about the fight in Vegas. About taking the punch that would have killed a normal human being.”
“That fight doesn’t prove anything.”
“But a lot of people are asking questions, aren’t they?” Larson said.
“What exactly do you want from me?”
“Your participation.”
“You want to ruin me, and you want me to help?” This sounded like a growl.
The trouble was, I sympathized with them both. Jenna Larson and I were both women working in the media, journalists of a sort, ambitious in a tough profession. She constantly needed to hustle, needed that leg-up. That was why she was here. I could understand that. But I’d also been in Macy’s shoes, struggling to do my job while hiding my wolf nature. I’d been exposed in a situation like this one: forced to, against my will.
I didn’t know who to side with.
“Here’s a question,” I said, gathering my thoughts even as I talked. “Clearly you have a talent for boxing. But did you before the lycanthropy? Did you box before, and this gave you an edge? Or did you become a werewolf and decide a werewolf would make a good boxer? Are you here because you’re a boxer, or because you’re a werewolf?”
“Does it matter?”
Did it? The distinction, the value judgment I was applying here was subtle. Was Macy a boxer in spite of his lycanthropy-or because of it? Was I sure that the former was any better, more noble, than the latter?
“This isn’t any different than steroids,” Larson said before I could respond. “You’re using something to create an unfair advantage.”
“It’s different,” Macy said, frowning. “What I have isn’t voluntary.”
She continued, “But can’t you see it? Kids going out and trying to get themselves bitten by werewolves so they can get ahead in boxing, or football, or anything.”
“Nobody’s that stupid,” he said. The curl in his lips was almost a snarl.
Larson frowned. “If it’s not me who breaks the story, it’ll be someone else, and the next person may not let you know about it first. In exchange for an exclusive, I can guarantee you’ll get to tell your side of the story-”
I saw it coming, but I didn’t have time to warn her or stop him.
He sprang, a growl rumbling deep in his t
hroat, arms outstretched and reaching for Larson. She dropped her recorder and screamed.
He was fast, planting his hands on her shoulders and shoving her to the wall. In response I shouldered him, pushing him off balance and away from the reporter. Normally, a five-six, skinny blond like me wouldn’t have been able to budge a heavyweight like Macy off his stride. But as a werewolf I had a little supernatural strength of my own, and he wasn’t expecting it. No one ever expected much out of me at first glance.
He didn’t stumble far, unfortunately. He shuffled sideways, while I kind of bounced off him. But at least he took his hands off Larson, and I ended up standing in between them. I glared, trying to look tough, but I was quivering inside. Macy could take me apart.
“You bastard, you’re trying to kill me!” Larson yelled. She was wide-eyed, breathing hard, panicked like a hunted rabbit.
Macy stepped back. His smile showed teeth. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
“I’ll charge you with assault,” she said, almost snarling herself.
“Both of you shut up,” I said, glaring, pulling out a bit of my own monster to quell them.
“You’re not as tough as you think you are,” he said, looking down at me, a growl in his voice, his fingers curling at his sides, like claws.
“Well, I don’t have to be, because we’re going to sit down and discuss this like human beings, got it?” I said.
Never taking his eyes off Larson, he stepped back to the table and returned to sitting. He was breathing calmly, though his scent was musky, animal. He was a werewolf, but he was in complete control of himself. I’d never seen anything like it.
He was in enough control that Larson would never talk him into an exclusive interview.
She’d retrieved her recorder and was pushing buttons and holding it to her ear. By the annoyed look on her face, I was guessing it was damaged. “I don’t need your permission,” she muttered. “I’ve got Kitty to back me up. The truth will come out.”
I frowned. “Jenna, I’m not sure this is the right way to go about this. This doesn’t feel right.”
“This isn’t about right, it’s about the truth.”
Macy looked at me, and I almost flinched. His gaze was intent-he was thinking fast. “Kitty. Why did you go public?”
“I was forced into it,” I said. “Kind of like this.”
“So-has going public helped you? Hurt you? If you could change it, would you?”
I’d worked hard to keep my lycanthropy secret, until I’d been forced into announcing what I was on the air. It hadn’t been my choice. I could have let it ruin me, but I made a decision to own that identity. To embrace it. It had made me notorious, and I had profited by it.
I had to admit it: “I don’t think I’d be nearly as successful as I am if I hadn’t gone public. I’d still be just another cult radio-show host and not the world’s first celebrity werewolf.”
He nodded, like I’d helped him make a decision.
“We’re not here to talk about Kitty,” Larson said. “Last chance, Macy. Are you in or out?” She was still treating this with aggression, like she was attacking. She was only offending him.
“Write your story,” he said. “Say what you need to. But do it without me. I won’t answer any questions. Now, get out.” He hopped off his table, went to the door, and opened it.
“You can’t do this. You’ll have to talk to someone. Sooner or later.”
I hooked my arm around hers and pulled her to the door, glancing at Macy over my shoulder one last time. I met his gaze. He seemed calm, determined, without an ounce of trepidation. Before I turned away, he smiled at me, gave a little nod. He was a wolf confident in his territory. I’d do best to slink away and avoid his wrath.
Larson and I left, and the door closed behind us.
Silent, we made our way back to the lobby of the arena. I said, “That went well.”
She’d gone a bit glassy-eyed and had lost the purposeful energy in her stride.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” she murmured.
“You need to get to a bathroom? Go outside?” I started hurrying.
She shook her head, but leaned against the wall and covered her face. “This must be what the rabbit feels like after it gets away from a fox.”
Post-traumatic stress from a simple interview? Maybe. Most people considered themselves the top of the food chain. Few of them ever encountered something that trumped them.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m usually not on the rabbit side of things.”
She stared at me and didn’t have to say it: I wasn’t helping.
“Is he going to come after me? Was he really threatening me? If I run this story, am I in danger?”
I urged her off the wall and toward the doors, so we could get outside and into the air. The closed space and pervasive odor of sweat was starting to get to me.
“No. It’s intimidation.” It was what people like him-boxer or werewolf-were good at. “He can’t touch you without getting in trouble, even if he is a werewolf.”
A few more steps brought us outside, into the night. I turned my face to the sky and took in a deep breath of fresh air, or as fresh as city air ever got.
“What are we going to do?” she said. “The story’s going to look pretty half-assed without a statement from him.”
The lack of an exclusive interview wasn’t the end of the world. I’d dealt with worse. We could still break the story.
“You’ll have a statement from me,” I said. “And I’ll have one from you. We’ll do the best with what we have.” What Larson had told Macy was true: the truth would come out eventually. Maybe by being part of the revelation, I could mitigate the impact of it-mitigate Larson’s ire over it.
“It’s not fair,” she grumbled. “It’s just not fair.”
I wondered if Macy was thinking the same thing.
As it turned out, Jerome Macy scooped us both. He held a press conference the next morning, revealed his werewolf identity to the world, and promptly announced his retirement from boxing, before anyone could kick him out. Jenna Larson’s exposé and call to action, and my interview of her on my show, were lost in the uproar. Almost immediately there was talk of stripping him of his heavyweight title. The debate was ongoing.
About a month later, I got a press kit from the WWE. For the new season of one of their pro wrestling spectacle TV series, they were “unleashing”-they actually used the word unleashing-a new force: The Wolf. Aka Jerome Macy.
So. He was starting a new career. A whole new persona. He had chosen to embrace his werewolf identity and looked like he was going gangbusters with it. I had to admire that. And I could stop feeling guilty about him and his story.
This changed everything, of course. He was going to have to do a lot of publicity, wasn’t he? A ton of promotion. Sometimes, patience was a virtue, and sometimes, what goes around comes around.
I picked up my phone and called the number listed in the press pack. I was betting I could get that interview with him now.
No Children, No Pets by Esther M. Friesner
I am Emmeline. I am six.
I am a city werewolf. I live in Central Park. It is very near the Plaza Hotel.
I don’t like the Plaza because it is full of all these people who are always asking, “Where are your mommy and daddy, little girl?” when they see me in the lobby. It is absolutely annoying. Then I have to scootle right out of there as fast as I can go on two legs, which is not as fast as I can go on four, but if I were scootling around the lobby on four legs, I would not even get in the front door of the Plaza Hotel, or the side door or even the delivery entrance, for Lord’s sake.
Lily Packmother says that when I am older and have got some self-control, I will be able to walk right in through the front door of the Plaza Hotel and march right through that lobby and straight up to that check-in desk and tell them “One room with a view of Central Park, a dozen raw prim
e sirloin steaks, a fat bellboy, and charge it, please.” Then I will be able to get right onto that big elevator and ride up to the very top floor-even if my room is not on that floor-and get off and find the best place to lurk until the moon turns full. Then I can eat people.
Oooooh, I absolutely love eating people! I am much too small to eat a whole big one now, but when I get older, I will be able to eat sixty-eleven dozen of them without so much as batting an eye. Lily Packmother says, “Emmeline, you can’t be serious about eating so many people. You will give yourself a tummy ache.” But I am mostly entirely serious, even if it takes us werewolves longer to get old than people. Lily Packmother says it is something to do with dog years or backwards dog years or something. All I know is I will have to wait. I am good at waiting. It is all a matter of seeing it through until the Revolution. That is what my daddy says.
Central Park is my most favorite place in the whole city. It is full of all of these trees that are very good to hide behind in the dark and also to pee on if you are a boy werewolf, which I am not, thank heavens. Boy werewolves do not have any good manners like me, Emmeline, even if they are my fellow proletary fighters in the workers’ struggle and Daddy would say that I owe them solidarity. Solidarity is awfully important but boy werewolves smell bad and sometimes they try to rip your throat out to establish pack dominance. I completely dislike them.
There are lots of good smells in Central Park. Sometimes I am able to find the hot-dog man and take some mustard right off his cart to put on my food because everything in New York City tastes much better with mustard. I never eat the hot-dog man. There would be no more hot dogs. I am enormously fond of hot dogs. Central Park also has all of these pigeons, which are not very good to eat even if you completely slorsh them all over with every drop of mustard in the entire universe. Lily Packmother says that they are all right when you are incredibly desperate and about to starve to death right this very minute, which happens more than you might imagine when you are a werewolf. She says beggars cannot be choosers and that there are werewolves starving to death in China, so we should count our blessings because we are living in America and not Communists.
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