To Kiss a Werewolf

by Molly Snow

  “You can’t really be serious.”

  “Why not?”

  “First of all, he was hurt really bad.”

  “Not that bad.”

  “And, that was a threat. You were threatening me, threatening my friends.”

  “I had to do it, for your own good.”

  Stella uprooted a handful of grass in frustration, and made sure her words wouldn’t be yelled at the top of her lungs. “Billy. Don’t talk to me like that. I’m not a child; and even if I were, your words come across as totally loony tunes. Do you ever listen to yourself?”

  “You loved me once, Stella. You can love me again.”

  “That’s not for you to decide for me. All you have done over the last year is freak me out more and more. I did love you at one time. Or so I thought. But I know that I won’t love you now, and I won’t love you in the future.”

  Billy’s chest raised with a deep breath and his gray eyes fixed in front of him on nothing in particular. “I can live with that.”

  “What?”

  “I can live with you never loving me… as long as I can have you.” He turned his intense gaze back to her, and his voice shook as he said, “The wedding will happen as planned.” He took her hand and forced the ring on her finger. “You will be my bride. That is final.”

  FORTY

  “This is a picture of your mother, from before you were even born.”

  Damien took it in the palm of his hand and stared hard at the photo of a woman with teased brown hair and a leather jacket, coolly glancing over her shoulder. There was something not quite right. “This is her?”

  “Yep—the fur, the fangs and all.”

  “She never told me.”

  “She was worried. It was our secret.”

  What news. So that’s how he became a werewolf. Damien couldn’t take his eyes off the picture, and fell back against his pillow in bed, half in shock. “I lived with her for seventeen years, and didn’t know about this? How?”

  “She kept it from me for a long time, too. It was easy enough; she could transform back and forth on a whim.”

  Damien raised his brows to that, and looked over the photo to his father sitting beside him on his bed, seeming nervous, his hands unnaturally folded together on his lap. “She could go back and forth… on a whim?”

  “Oh, yes. She could do it all the time. One moment we’d just be relaxing and watching a movie, as teenagers do, sharing a bowl of popcorn in my dad’s basement. The next moment, she’d transform and scare the living daylights out of me. She loved to see my startled expression. It made her laugh and laugh. She got me every time, too.”

  “Hm. You fell in love with her… even with—”

  “With her being a werewolf? Oh, yeah. There was so much to love about her, you know?”

  A smile crossed Damien’s face. He knew. “Man, I miss her.” He sighed. “…So, now I have lots of questions.”

  “I knew you would.” A hand patted Damien’s knee. “That’s why I’m going to have you talk to someone else.”

  *

  It was dark out. The tour bus’s door opened and a neon pink fog rolled across the steps. Damien entered, and the drummer saluted him from the driver’s seat, dressed completely like he was ready for a concert, but without all the makeup. “Welcome aboard.”

  It was so surreal. So strange. Damien looked over his shoulder, and saw his father still standing outside, in front of Uncle Leo’s. “You coming?”

  “Nah, you take your time. I’ll be here.”

  Damien was met right away by Rock, in the middle of the aisle with a hearty handshake. “Hello!” The rocker smiled. “It’s good to see you again.”

  It is? he wanted to say in return, but bit his tongue. Everything would be answered shortly. He was certain. In fact, he knew no questions needed to be asked. This band, this rock band, The Deathheads, were actually prepared for, and expecting, this moment.

  The bus’s ceiling had little lights like stars glittering all the way back until the small sleeping compartments took over the tail-end of the traveling home. A huge poster, boasting their newest release in their line of “Follicle Fortress” hair products, was taped to a window: “Strand Your Ground!” it said above the trio rockin’ their wild manes. Damien caught a whiff of pepperoni pizza, and turned his sights to an empty box sitting on a table, being the evidence of the band’s dinner.

  “Hey, that was from Dough-licious,” Damien said. “My Uncle Leo owns that place.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Rock smiled, like that was quite some news already shared. “You hungry?”

  “I’m okay. I already ate.”

  “Good, because there’s nothing left. And this bus doesn’t do well through drive-thrus. Come have a seat.” Rock moved the pizza box onto a microwave, and they sat down. “We’ll play cards for a while, first; if you don’t mind. Joe will take us for a little drive.” How a deck of cards could fit somewhere in skin tight leather pants was beyond Damien’s knowledge, but he was game.

  “You ever play Poker?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Alright then. C-Lo, come have a seat! We need another man.”

  The guitarist sat backwards in a chair, in the aisle, between them. Rock didn’t waste any time getting right to the meat of their conversation. “Your ma was a gem, Damien.”

  “Yeah?” His heart thudded at the comment, and he wondered what all they knew.

  “We grew up in the same neighborhood. She hung out with myself and my best friends here—C-Lo and Joe. Then there was also our bud, Richard, your pa. You ever seen That ’70s Show? Because it was kinda like that. A group of us guys hung out with your ma, and we all wanted to date her, but her heart was stuck on your pa. Kinda like that dork guy with the redhead, but your pa was no dork, no, sir.” Rock shuffled the face cards with a glint in his dark green eyes at the memories. “Yeah, we were all real close, hangin’ out after school in each other’s basements, going out for burgers nearly every weekend. Roller-skating at The Roller Dome. Fun stuff. Fun days.”

  It was all definitely news to Damien. And he soaked every word up, knowing there was much more to be told.

  “Then one day we had this brilliant idea that we’d start a band. Practice usually took place out of C-Lo’s garage. I was the only one with a voice, so I took to the mike. C-Lo here had already been playing guitar, ever since he was like seven, or some ridiculous age like that. And Joe taught himself the drums on an old set we pitched our cash in for down at the pawn shop.”

  “And Pa?”

  “Your pa wasn’t as into the idea as the rest of us were, so he was more like our first fan, coming to our practices, watching from a lumpy old couch and holding hands with your ma Deb.”

  “He didn’t want to be in the band?”

  “Nah, but that’s what usually happens when you go steady with a girl. Look what happened with the Beatles after Yoko. A girlfriend becomes more important than anything else. Your pa was a real wild child, though. He woulda fit right in with the group, if he ever wanted to try the keyboard or bass or something. But, no, besides Deb, he had his skateboarding and his dirt biking and whatever else came with wheels, to jump off some ridiculous height or careen down some crazy-steep slope. Deb was also a bit of a daredevil, so that made them even more of peas in a pod, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  Damien crossed his arms and leaned back with a smile.

  “Yeah, she was always on the back of your pa’s motorcycle, and she loved sneaking into any bar with a mechanical bull, to give the crowd a real show.”

  “Really?” Damien chuckled, impressed.

  “Oh yeah. She was a feisty one.”

  “She wouldn’t even let me talk about owning a motorcycle,” he mused. He knew his ma was a tough cookie, but that was usually in response to things like seeing him break a bone. She had swiftly cradled him and took him to the emergency room as a little boy who had fallen off the couch. And there were the times her boss threatened to fire her over chew
ing out rude customers who came to the diner. She never did get fired, and the truth was, everyone who worked there, including her boss, knew the customers always deserved it.

  “When she found out she was pregnant with you, she slowed down. Everything changed. She didn’t want your pa to do any more stupid tricks either. Life centered around the life growing inside her.”

  C-Lo nodded a smile in agreement. A very soft and kind smile, which made the words even more real and meaningful. A tear surprised Damien’s eyes, and he wiped it.

  “It was around that time, also, that we found out she was a werewolf. She claimed her mother was one too. Interesting thing was, I soon found out I was a werewolf; so was C-Lo and so was Joe. But your father wasn’t. We thought it was the strangest odds that all of us, from the same city, from the same high school, happened to have the same thing going on. Deb had this theory that we were connected and drawn to each other for a reason, like how dogs form packs. She said we must have subconsciously formed our pack, and that’s how we could all be such close friends.”

  “But Pa—”

  “That’s right—your pa wasn’t like us. He wasn’t a werewolf. We kept expecting him to turn one day, and let him in on our secret, knowing he would take it with him to his grave. He sure loved your ma, but with time, and even though you were growing big in her tummy, you could tell he felt left out from the bond we all had. We could see it in his eyes, though he denied being upset over it.”

  “So, he wanted to be a werewolf?” Damien was surprised at the notion.

  “Kids like fitting in with their friends. I’m sure you know the feeling, being a teenager yourself.”

  The thought of Tyler and the rest of his surfer friends, as well as the football players, flashed through his mind. Then there was Coach, and all the hot girls who knew they were hot, who pursued him. There were some true friends probably out of them all, but, yeah… peer pressure. A lot of peer pressure. “I don’t care about fitting in anymore,” Damien said abruptly.

  “That’s good.”

  The bus’s brakes made a dull screech as the bus stopped, before rumbling forward again.

  “Our band started getting local notoriety. We were actually in the newspaper a couple times and the rock station invited us in for an interview, and even played our demo. The band, and Deb and Rich, we could all feel it.”

  “What?”

  “Success coming our way. A Bigshot from LA heard our demo. Just the thing we needed, and we signed contracts not much later. It broke Deb’s heart, but she played like she was proud of us. By that time, you were born anyway. She was eighteen. We all were eighteen, just like you are now.

  “Things worked out so that Rich had a place in our band, but as my stunt double. I could never do the tricks he pulled.

  “You ever want to be a super hero?” Rock asked while shuffling.

  “I never really thought about that, to be honest. It’s not something people normally ask themselves, right?”

  “As children we automatically think of ourselves as super heroes. It’s not even a question. As we get older, something changes in our thinking. Suddenly things become impossible. The only heroes, then, a boy thinks about, are the logical types, like fire fighters or police officers. No longer is it men in spandex and capes. You follow me?” He finished dealing.

  “I think so.” A jack, queen, and king all in spades, didn’t distract.

  “Superheroes of another kind exist today. And you know, because you are one.”

  Though Damien knew they knew his secret, it was still hard to say it out loud to someone other than himself. “You mean how I was a werewolf? But I’m not anymore.”

  The guys looked at each other with knowing smiles, then back at Damien. “You’re still a werewolf.”

  “Why do you say that? I haven’t had any symptoms in days. I don’t transform anymore.”

  “You’re not dead,” Rock said. “That’s how we know.”

  “So—what? You are saying it can never go away?”

  They nodded.

  “Then what’s up with me not transforming?”

  “You can transform. You just don’t have the know-how.”

  “But it happened all the time before. I didn’t have to even think about it, and suddenly my body would change before my eyes.”

  “Tell him, C-Lo.” Rock set down his cards, and nudged his friend.

  “Alright.” The guitarist leaned over the table, to be closer to Damien and cocked a dark eyebrow. “It’s like when you hit puberty and your voice cracks. Once you mature into things, you have control over your voice. You see?”

  No he didn’t see, and shook his head.

  “Look, man,” C-Lo became even more intense, “you matured. You grew into your changes you went through during puberty. Same with being a werewolf. You went through the growing pains, and now… well, you’re all grown up.”

  With all the talk about superheroes and being mature, it didn’t make Damien feel any better. At that moment, he felt worse. He thought he had rid himself of the beast somehow, through some freak incident up in the woods near the beach that one night. He had put that part of himself in the past, where he thought it should be. A long sigh, and slumping back in his chair, gave away his thoughts, because Rock suddenly stood up and turned around, hiking up the bottom of his leather vest. It was their symbol, The Deathheads’ symbol.

  That got Damien’s attention. He jerked up in his seat, then stood. “What is that?” He pointed.

  Rock turned back around. “You know—you have it on your back too.”

  “Why do I have it?”

  “You’re part of our pack.”

  “I am? How did I get the tattoo? I figured I walked into a parlor and blacked out.”

  Rock sat back down. “Alright, I know this is a new concept, but they’re not tattoos. Not in the sense that you think of them, being made by needles filled with ink.”

  “What is it then?”

  “It’s an imprint.”

  Damien cocked an eyebrow.

  “It one day naturally appears from your DNA. A change in the skin’s pigmentation. You don’t remember redness or scabbing at all?”

  “No.” He shook his head.

  “Of course not. The imprint—it’s sort of a confirmation of who you belong to. Sounds corny, but we belong to each other. We all have one, and, just for kicks, decided it should be our band’s symbol.”

  “An imprint…,” Damien trailed off.

  “Yes, we are imprinted upon each other. Not in the sense that Hollywood thinks, but imprinted nonetheless.”

  “Wait a second.” Damien recalled the time by the bed and breakfast, when the band suddenly appeared in his dreams. Before they disappeared, they had howled and morphed into werewolves themselves. “Was that a dream, or were you…?”

  “I was at a radio station interview, but the rest were there. Your pa was there. And I have to say, it made us all proud how you were listening to our marathon. We had you on our radar for a while, and knew one day—”

  “Your radar?”

  C-lo laughed, and interrupted, “Not like Star Trek radars. He’s just talking about our intuitions. Sometimes we can hear or see each other’s thoughts.”

  “Yeah, I was just using a figure of speech.” Rock smiled. “C-lo’s right—I mean our intuitions. Words and images can come spontaneously at first, at random, out of your control. But in time, you’ll learn how to tap into each other’s thoughts, and even pass words and images to each other.”

  “So I wasn’t crazy, that one night at the inn. I heard someone and saw something.”

  “No, not crazy,” Rock said, and the two guys, members of his pack, smiled with wolfish gleams in their eyes.

  FORTY-ONE

  The clock radio showed it was 6:32 a.m., and the sun was already sifting through lace curtains. But the air was cold, like how it feels to stand too long in front of an open ice cream freezer at the supermarket. Only, Stella wasn’t at a store, and there
was no freezer around, no ice cream—dang it! She glanced around her room, the same one she and Kit had once shared, with the old dresser and closet that smelled like moth balls.

  If only she woke up back at the time of the PAA fieldtrip, before everything went downhill. Her thoughts drifted to Damien, as they often did, and she gripped her quilt and pulled it higher up on her neck, hoping to be satisfied by some sense of warmth. If she had it all to do over again, she would have kissed him in the kitchen when she had the chance. Forget that Maggie walked in on them—she would have taken his face in her hands and passionately pressed her mouth to his, then used the memory of his hot lips against hers to warm her spirits over and over again, even if for fleeting moments.

  A truly depressing thought followed. Damien wouldn’t want her anymore. She was fooling herself by holding onto a ray of hope that someday he would come for her. It had been nearly two months now. It didn’t matter how much they connected at the concert, how much he praised her and made promises to her. If he wanted her, he would have come by now. No one wants to be with a zombie. Nobody.

  Well, except for another zombie.

  And that’s when Billy came to mind…. But not in the usual sense of running away from him, kicking him where it hurts, and all that. For once she played with the idea of succumbing to marrying him. Just accepting what was offered, saying “I do,” and going on the planned Honeymoon to Mexico during the Day of the Dead celebrations. She stared at her little diamond engagement ring and imagined holding Billy’s hand, walking down the streets of Puerto Vallarta, her in a traditional dress and flowers in her hair, him in a mariachi outfit and sombrero, the flesh of their faces missing, showing decrepit muscles, smiling teeth, and eyeballs held by loose spaghetti-like strands. They’d fit right in with others parading around in costumes.

  A shudder took her out of the daydream, and she felt all over her face, making sure she was still intact. Quietly, she got out of bed, the old mattress springs squeaking, and went over to her window. The next minute she had it slid open, and she pushed its dusty screen until it popped loose and fell to the brush outside. She felt scared. What was she doing? What was she thinking?

  She turned back around and basically flung her nightgown off and threw on the only clothes she liked—her original shorts and tank she wore at the Deathheads concert. Before she slipped through the window, she huffed and grabbed one of the ugly sweaters out of a drawer.