Wolf, WY

by A. F. Henley

  Randy sat up and pulled himself closer in an awkward slide. "I don't know what you need to hear to make this right, Vaughn. I like you because you're different. Strong, raw, real. There's something that burns in your eyes that I don't think I've ever seen before. And I know I've only been given a couple of short glimpses, but I like what's under there." He reached out and tapped Vaughn's chest. "You look amazing when you're coming undone. Rage-wise and otherwise." He grinned, and trailed his fingers up and over Vaughn's chest. He followed that with a light touch up and around Vaughn's neck, waking bumps and lifting hairs. "And your skin seems to come alive when I touch you. Did you even know that? Like there's some kind of charge running between us."

  A passing car tossed reflected sunlight through the cab of the pickup, and golden flames flared through Vaughn's serious eyes. Randy told himself it was the moment as opposed to the light, though. It was the touch, and the closeness, and the timbre he put in his voice when he dragged his fingernails along the back of Vaughn's neck, and said, "There's something damn hot about being desired by someone you find desirable."

  Vaughn closed his eyes and caught Randy's hand. Though he pulled it off his neck and lowered it to his knee, he didn't let go. "So it's the sex?"

  Randy didn't hesitate in his reply. "Of course it's the sex." He smiled when Vaughn gave him a frown, and spread his hand underneath Vaughn's palm to try and catch Vaughn's fingers between his own. "But it's also the way you keep an eye out for me. It's the way you watch over your kids, and not just the tiny cute ones. It's the way you touch me when you're trying to be careful, even though you're too damn big and strong to be able to pull it off. I know enough about reading people to see that there's a good person in that lug-head of yours. But I'm also learning that person is passionate and empathetic. You're ridiculously loyal, and maybe that goes for normal out here, but from where I'm from, it's not just rare, it's unheard of. I can't tell you that I'm drawn to you because we're going to be perfect for each other, because I don't know if that's true. I can tell you one thing, though..." He tightened his grip when Vaughn finally let him thread their fingers together. "I'm looking forward to finding out just how close to perfect we can manage."

  For what seemed like several minutes, Vaughn did nothing more than watch him—his eyes, his mouth, a dozen unknown points of interest on his shoulders and neck. Then Vaughn reached up and traced his fingertips over Randy's forehead. As always, Vaughn's fingers were rough and calloused, and yet they managed to land as light as a breeze on Randy's skin. From crown to the bridge of Randy's nose, down his nose, along the ridges of his upper lip, and to his chin, Vaughn's touch lit a million infinitesimal sparks on Randy's face.

  "I was thinking," Vaughn said quietly, and Randy had to force open eyelids that he hadn't even realized he had shut. When Vaughn parted his lips, Randy followed suit, the blood already swimming through Randy's veins at twice its normal speed.

  There was no kiss, though. Instead, a breath, and Vaughn's low, deep voice, "I don't imagine you to be much of a camper, but maybe when the weather turns, if you're still hanging around and everything, maybe you and me can go up into the mountains one weekend. Leave the kids behind. I got something you should probably see."

  Randy gave him a quick laugh. "Camping must be a family thing of yours, is it? Lyle asked me the same thing."

  Vaughn didn't answer the question. "What do you think of him?"

  "Lyle?" Randy asked, surprised, and waited for Vaughn's nod. He frowned above a laugh that was more stilted and much sharper than the previous one. He could tell a lie as easily as he could do anything else; God knew, it would probably be simpler to do just that. But he didn't need to hear his father's voice telling him that lying was what had made him run in the first place, and he didn't need a prophet to explain that trying to build a strong relationship on the foundation of lies would be a disaster waiting to happen. "I think he's probably a great guy. And he's already as hot as a firecracker. A few more years on him and he's going to be a prize and a half to some lucky someone. But he's not the same kid I saw defending his father over cutting down a tree. Not anymore. And I think whatever Lyle's got going on is too big for just you and Lyle to deal with."

  Vaughn sighed a deep breath. He released Randy's hand and patted Randy's thigh. "I hope not, Randy." He turned back to the steering wheel and fingered the ignition key. "I sure hope not."

  A long pause filled the space between them while Randy thought of something to say.

  Vaughn beat him to the punch, however. "You'll have the kids tonight, though—

  Randy rolled his eyes. "Oh, for God's sake..."

  "I'm serious, Randy," Vaughn said, starting the pickup. "Please don't argue about this. Let me help where I see fit to help. Right now it's the least that I can do."

  "Fine," Randy replied, surprising Vaughn into both softening his forehead and offering several confused blinks. "If that's going to make you happy, then send them over."

  He held up a finger before Vaughn got a chance to respond. "But if this is just a ploy to keep me off of you, then you should understand that not only can I be persuasive when I want to be, I can be sneaky as all fuck. Having your kids around isn't going to make me stop trying to get you naked."

  Vaughn shook his head, laughed, and forced the shifter into drive. "I don't think you trying to get me naked is going to be a problem." Without turning, Vaughn's smile grew as Randy looked over. "For either of us."

  It was probably foolish that Randy felt the words fall over him like a warm, fresh-from-the-dryer blanket. He figured he was pretty much over caring about how foolish he could get at that point, though.

  *~*~*

  The silver-blue landscape beyond Randy's front window was so radiant that Randy's first thought was to check the sky for miniature sleighs and tiny reindeers. He lifted a hand to palm hair off his forehead and winked a couple of long, forced blinks in an attempt to clear his sleep-fogged brain. The scent of popcorn that had got just a little too close to burned-beyond-edible still hung heavy in the living room, and though the television had long ago been muted, the newscaster beyond the glass pantomimed interest in some kind of national news moment.

  An odd sensation tickled the instinctive portions of Randy's mind and told him that there was a reason he was awake. He lay still, concentrating on the hallway that led up to the bedrooms where Isaac rested in his bed, and Hannah in the guest room. They'd been extremely upset by Randy's intention to sleep on the couch while they got the "comfy places," and even more so by the fact that they hadn't been able to talk him into letting them sleep in the living room with him when they'd understood he wasn't willing to try and make it up the stairs.

  Hannah's, "But Daddy said—" had been immediately shut down with Randy's reminder that Vaughn wasn't in residence at the moment, and that made Randy King Boss of All Things Small. Thankfully, arguing was neither Hannah nor Isaac's strong point, and they'd been shipped off to the Land of Sweet Dreams in appropriate mattress-lined vessels. In hindsight, however, Randy was questioning the wisdom of having two small children so very far away from a laid-up body.

  "It was probably just the wind," he mumbled, but the picturesque, snow-laden front lawn seemed stiller than he'd seen it in a long time. The cruel wind that had smoothed the terrain into softly sloping mounds and glittering, polished ice figures had taken the night off, abandoning its artwork under the shine of the full moon.

  From below, the furnace thumped on and heated air thrummed through the vents with a pleasant hum. For several seconds Randy drifted, telling himself he was listening for the children, but knowing full well that his exhausted body was doing its damnedest to pull him back to sleep. He would have given into it, too. The blanket was warm, the ache in his knee had died down to a dull thud, and the living room was quiet enough to hear the thoughts of the dead.

  Then out of the blue, with enough force to rattle the frame, something hit Randy's front window. He jumped, swallowing a shout of surprise for fear of w
aking up the kids, but couldn't stop himself from cursing at the pain that followed when he dropped both feet to the ground. "God damn, motherfuck—"

  The slam came again, shaking not only the window but the wall beside it. "Fucking hell?" Randy forced himself to stand, his chest pounding. Snowballs? Birds? Branches? He scowled at the window and tried to control his breathing. Had Vaughn's premonition about untrimmed trees come back to haunt him?

  He swallowed and stepped closer, his eyes traveling the window from corner to corner, top toward bottom, and he stopped dead in his tracks before he'd even checked a quarter of it. "What the fuck is that?" Randy whispered. He told himself to move closer, but his feet refused to budge.

  "A bird..." he said to the empty room, "just a funny, weird..."

  Even as he spoke the words, Randy knew without question that it didn't look like a bird at all. He'd seen a dozen birds meet their untimely demise against his windows; even back in the city it happened more than Randy felt it should. Sometimes those dives of destruction even left a mark—a smudge of blood from a broken beak, a clump of feathers, or a smear of shit. If what had hit his window had been a bird, then the poor soul had exploded on impact. Problem was, even if he reasoned that might have been the case, the shape was all wrong. More so, it was too easily identifiable as something else.

  "It's a hand print," he mumbled, too shocked to hold the statement in. A mucky, messy, slimy hand—

  Then he didn't need to be convinced. For a third time that hand smacked into Randy's window. Gnarled claws curled as if to grip into the glass, a veined and bulging forearm worked below them, and though Randy's head began to shout that he should move, move, move, all he could do was stare.

  With a crack loud enough to hear through the window, the skin of that forearm split from wrist to elbow.

  Randy turned away with a shout that should have been loud enough to wake the entire house, but actually came out as a choked, intelligible slur of vowels. The phone—he needed the phone. Vaughn... he needed...

  He didn't get to make a single step toward the kitchen. A shriek from the porch shivered up his spine. His blood became like ice.

  He turned back to the window. The voice was Lyle's. And Lyle was in trouble. Not just a little, I've-come-to-fuck-with-you trouble, either, but my-body-is-breaking kind of trouble.

  Drugs? Gangs? Did they even have gangs out there? Was that why Lyle had gone from a seemingly-sweet young dude into a borderline crazy little fucker out of the blue? What had they done to him? What had he done to himself?

  The pain in Randy's knee was forgotten. Calling Vaughn for assistance dropped to secondary levels of importance. The only thing that mattered was Lyle. Lyle being hurt. Lyle needing help. Lyle dying...

  His mother's voice tripped through his head. "You always were a sucker for a young man in need, Randy."

  His father's voice sounded above it. "You can't go running headlong into trouble, Son. You and I aren't made for that kind of thing."

  And in the seconds it took for Randy to hobble from living room to hallway, to claw open the closet and grab the only weapon-like thing he had there, flashbacks set at super-speed took over his vision. There he was in court standing all but nose-to-nose to a handgun-waving, profanity-and-plea-shouting father who was about to lose all six children and a long-suffering wife. There he was at the gym watching his startled ex-partner slowly rise from the changing room floor, the hard cock of a stranger bobbing at both of them. There he was back at home, gritting his teeth while his father pretended not to hear his mother bitch.

  He limped to the front door, grabbed the handle, gritted his teeth and snapped the lock open. Vaughn's son was out there. Vaughn's son needed help. "You're damn fucking right I'm made for that kind of thing."

  He yanked the door open, steeled himself against the rush of cold, and hitched over the threshold. In the corner of the porch, Lyle squatted, breathing hard. He was naked, and how that was even possible Randy couldn't imagine. The bottom of Randy's feet already burned from the cold seeping through his socks, and though the air was still, the temperature was brutal. The skin of Lyle's face, chest, arms and thighs were crisscrossed with violent slashes or tears, and Lyle's eyes burned with an unholy yellow that was unlike anything Randy had ever seen before.

  "Lyle?" Randy stepped forward, his grip tightening on the umbrella he'd taken as protection, even as he reached out with his other hand. "What happened, buddy?"

  "Rannh..." Lyle opened his mouth, but the sound that came out of it had no semblance to an actual word. The parted lips became a smile, and then wider still, until Randy was convinced that he couldn't be seeing what he was seeing, because it would be impossible for a mouth to stretch in such a way.

  Lyle's voice rose, dropped an octave or ten, and both hands went to his face. "Rannh!" The same clawed fingers that had struck Randy's window grasped both his cheeks, and Lyle pulled as though it were nothing more serious than plastic wrap.

  Randy stepped back, his eyes widening. His mouth dropped open. "Lyle! No, stop! I—" He shook his head as patches of bloody skin bulged and twisted on Lyle's body. Thick, heavy, crimson droplets fell from Lyle's nose and bloomed in the white snow.

  Dreaming... he had to be. There was no other explanation. Burned popcorn had spoiled in his guts, and it had twisted reasoning into nightmare. It didn't explain the almost unbearable ache of his feet, or the gut-clenching cold coiling through his clothing as if the cloth wasn't even there, but it had to be the truth. Sleepwalking? Poisoning? He stared at Lyle, no longer moving closer, no longer believing anything was true, and choked on his own spit when he realized what was sprouting through the skin of Lyle's face.

  "Fur..." He had to speak the word. Had to say it. Had to make himself acknowledge it, lest he lose his grip on the potential that the moment really could be a dream.

  Unfortunately, his voice was clear and loud, and sounded far, far too real.

  Lyle stretched his mouth wider, an agonized roar split the peace of the yard, and then Lyle's face began to bulge as though something was making an attempt to exit Lyle's head. Otherwise perfect teeth started to slide from Lyle's gums and for a second Randy thought they were going to simply fall out of Lyle's head. Instead, they grew... sharpened... in an unbelievable, unrealistic, and impossible process. Canine teeth became exactly what the term implied—deadly, sharp weapons for tearing, ripping, pulling.

  It was too much. Randy screamed, summoned enough strength to move, and, with his eyes watering and his blood racing, he jerked back toward the door. Instead of refuge, he slammed into something so hard and tall that Randy thought he'd mis-stepped and had slammed directly into the doorframe. When that doorframe somehow reached around him and tugged him back, Randy dug all ten fingers into it hard enough to force a bellow. He looked up, terrified, and something too overwhelming to be called mere relief flooded through him.

  "Vaughn!" Randy gasped, swallowed, and tried again. "Vaughn, Lyle... there's something... we've got to—"

  "Get in the house." Vaughn's voice was low and raspy, and his tone carried an unspoken but more than obvious warning about arguing with him.

  Randy didn't heed the threat. "We have to help him. I don't know if he'll let us get close. I don't even know what the fuck is happen—"

  Vaughn caught both Randy's shoulders and shook him hard. "Get in the house. Go."

  A deep, threatening growl sounded behind him and Randy swiveled his head back Lyle's way. Only it wasn't Lyle. With a stare that didn't wander from Randy's eyes, the large gray wolf that had taken Lyle's place gave a powerful shake. Drops of blood and bits of flesh flew.

  "Oh, fucking hell," Randy whispered. His guts clenched and his good knee went as weak as his busted one. "Vaughn, what the fuck is going on—"

  The wolf leapt, Vaughn released his own guttural growl, and Randy's question was cut short as he was tossed at the front door. "Now!" Vaughn coughed.

  Randy stumbled, trying to keep his balance. Vaughn's voice was wrong, all w
rong. Creepy, scary, spiders-crawling-down-one's-spine wrong. "Vaughn?"

  Vaughn crouched, took the full brunt of the wolf's weight, and the two forms went tumbling across the porch. Then Vaughn had the creature pinned, and as the wolf snapped and tried to wiggle free, Vaughn whipped his head to the right and glared at Randy. Both of Vaughn's eyes were as brilliantly yellow as Lyle's had been.

  Randy shrank against the door. Skin tore under Vaughn's right eye as though an invisible switch had been let loose and sliced right through.

  "Now!" Vaughn growled. "You have to go now! Don't make me fucking tell you again!"

  As though watching the same horror scene over again, the canine tooth underneath Vaughn's curled lip began to descend. Randy slapped the door. He fumbled for the handle. And when it let go, before Randy had even managed to twist the knob, Randy fell into the house in such a panic that he barely felt the dagger of pain in his knee.

  The front door slammed. He heard the lock engage. But he was so far past shocked that Randy didn't even pause to make sense of that. He rolled over, screamed when he put pressure on his knee, and with his eyes all but blinded by white-hot pain, and a mind bubbling with impossible explanations and attempts at reason, Randy pulled himself into a crawl. It was an attempt that lasted less than one move as another slice of agony raced from his knee. He clawed at the wall of the hallway, and used it to try and pull himself upright. As he rose, sweat slipped down his back and his vision wavered. None of it stopped him from forcing himself to the living room and the front window.

  Vaughn... Lyle... how in the fuck? What in the hell?

  The sound of a heavy tumble pulled Randy's vision to the stairs of the porch. Two twisting animals—their muscles tight and hard, their muzzles drawn up into tooth-bared snarls, and their eyes blazing with fury—fell from the porch to the frozen ground. A sharp yelp was loosed, and one of the wolves stood to retreat a single step, only to be faked-out by the other, who immediately jumped again. Long, horrifyingly sharp teeth were sunk into the neck of the wolf that had stepped off. A deeper, angrier yelp of pain was shouted at the attacking wolf and with a swing that seemed to use every muscle the wolf had, it flung the attacking wolf off of itself.