by Dan Dillard
Chapter 9
The cab rolled up in front of the cafe at 2:48. He sat staring out the window, his breath fogging two ovals on the glass. Anticipation and nervousness battled for his attention. The spiky-haired cabbie smiled into the rear-view mirror.
"Sir, we're here. Someplace else you'd like to go?" she said.
Jason stared.
"Sir?"
Slowly he came back to reality.
"This is the place, right?" the cabbie asked.
"Right. I'm sorry, what do I owe you?"
She read him the meter and he handed her cash plus a tip and exited the cab. It crossed his mind to get back in the car and go anywhere else, but he heard the Scion drive away behind him. Rocky was there, he could feel it in his gut. Then the glass door with the open sign on it burst open and Rocky's smile beamed.
"Hey!" she said.
"Hi back."
"You're right on time. I like that. I hope you don't mind, but I'd rather go anywhere other than here. Was it too forward of me, writing a note to you like that?"
"No, no that's fine. We can go wherever you like. I wasn't sure I'd make it. I was checking out a rental house," he said.
"Great. Find one you like?"
He thought about it for a second and decided he really did like the tiny house out in the woods. "I did."
"You'll have to show me sometime. Not today though. We've got wolf stuff to talk about, don't we?"
Her matter-of-fact words caught him by surprise. Deep down he knew she recognized him-his kind. Their kind? It still surprised him to hear it out loud.
"I suppose we do."
"What? You're not excited to meet another?"
He touched her arm firmly enough to stop her determined gait and looked hard into her eyes. The palest of green. She smiled .
"You really are, aren't you?" he asked.
"It's a trip, right?" she said. "Come on. I've got just the place."
They crossed the street amidst light traffic and hopped onto the sidewalk. That led to another sidewalk, and finally to a biking trail.
"I walk here all the time, good place to think."
Jason peered down the path. A man on a touring bike sped by. Fifty yards ahead of them was another couple walking.
Under his breath, he muttered, "It's a good place to hunt."
"That too," she said.
"You can hear me. I'm not used to that."
She held an index finger to her lips which were smiling. They walked a little further before Jason spoke again.
"So are there others? I mean that you've met?"
"No. None that I know of. When I caught your scent in the restaurant yesterday, I just about cried," Rocky said.
"Family? Do you have family?"
"Dad's still around. You?"
"That's a long story. A bit much to start the conversation with," Jason said.
She stared at him briefly, then shrugged. "Ok. When did you know? When did you first, you know, change?"
"Thirteen."
He kicked a large pebble off the path as another biker passed by.
"Wow. I was ten."
"Ten? I thought it was a puberty..."
"It is," she interrupted. "Have you met any others?"
"Nope. Not until yesterday." He looked off into the distance and his pace slowed. She matched him stride for stride.
"I don't know how you get it."
"It's not a disease, Jason."
"Isn't it?"
"Well, I don't think so. You don't think your parents were like us?"
"Adopted. Not sure what my parents were. I wondered at times, when I was younger, if maybe I was some type of weird experiment gone wrong."
"So maybe you did get this from your real parents?" she said.
"You think it's hereditary?" he asked.
"How else. I never got attacked by a wolf, never even bitten by a dog," she said.
"Me either."
Rocky stepped off the asphalt path and into the tree-line. Dried leaves and underbrush were scattered about and she crunched through both. Jason followed without hesitation.
"This is the way to my thinking place," she said.
He looked up through the canopy at the afternoon light streaming down. All the animal sounds halted. Birds stopped singing, nothing but insect buzzing as they tramped through the woods. It seemed to him a form of respect from those lower on the food chain. Or maybe it was fear. He caught a smile on Rocky's lips as if she liked that honor. As they had sensed each other, the rest of the wild beasts also sensed them.
"It's possible, I suppose," Jason said.
"What's that?"
"That one of my real parents died, and that passed the trait on to me?"
"Trait," she said and laughed.
"What?"
"Well it's not exactly green eyes or freckles is it?"
"You know what I mean. Maybe one of my biological parents was?like me."
She stopped walking and sat on a fallen log. He plopped next to her and began to pick at its soft bark. They were silent for a full minute.
"Wa-ya."
She looked at him as if he were crazy.
"Oh?kay."
"My landlord is Cherokee. She told me my spirit animal was Wa-ya. Wolf. Have you ever heard anything like that?"
"Nope. But it's certainly creepy with a capital weird."
He nodded and picked at the moss covering the log. "Kind of cool though, don't ya think?" he said. He tossed a piece of bark into the leaves behind them. His ears picked up the sound of rubber on asphalt and he looked through the trees to the path to find another biker headed somewhere.
"It's just that I have these dreams where I'm watching this Native family?"
Rocky's face went pale, eyes wide. She grabbed his arm and squeezed.
"What?" he said.
"And the father leaves? Mother is bathing an infant in the stream?" she said.
Jason's face hardened. "How do you know that?"
"I have the same dream. Only I'm watching another wolf from the woods. He watches the family of humans."
"No shit," he said, slack-jawed.
"No. He watches for days. Then he sees me and orders me back to the pack."
Rocky's words scared him and intrigued him at the same time. "Then what?" he asked.
"Then I follow him back the next day," she said.
Jason continued, "Right. But there's a third wolf in the dreams. A blue one. Younger."
"Yes," Rocky says. "He follows us to the place where the people are and then they fight."
"Who fights?"
"You do. You fight the blue wolf."
"Me?"
Rocky touched his shoulder.
"Of course it's you. Don't you see the dream from the Gray's perspective? When I see you, I'm the she-wolf, White. I feel her presence all the time."
"And when I met you yesterday, I saw her. I never really considered it. I guess I thought the dreams were just some part of the curse."
"Disease. Curse. You really aren't in love with this status are you? Do you know how special we are?"
He gave a disagreeing snort. "Then what happens?"
"You don't know?"
"I never get that far with the dream."
She looked off into the distance. Jason continued to pull small strips of bark from the tree they were sitting on. A breeze rolled by them as the sun dipped toward the horizon.
"You humiliate Blue and he runs off. Away from the direction of the pack."
Jason grew impatient.
"Then what?"
"That's as far as I got."
He stopped picking at the log and looked at Rocky, thoughtfully. "You think we are those wolves? That dream is our past, or some weird possible future?"
"I have no idea."
Jason stood and paced while he talked, crushing leaves beneath his Converse.
"You think there's another one like us? This blue wolf is a man living somewhere and having the same dreams? What are the odd
s of us running into one another in the middle of nowhere? Do you think he's here somewhere as well?"
She motioned her hands for him to calm down and he sat next to her on the log. "Relax," she said.
"How? Are you? How can you?" he asked. His hand pushed the hair up on his forehead and he paced some more.
"You found me," she said.
"I wasn't looking for you."
"I know. I wasn't looking for you either."
Jason stopped pacing, "But do you get the feeling he-that other wolf-is looking for us? Like maybe we're all supposed to be together?"
She patted the log again, maintaining a calm Jason wasn't capable of. He did as he was urged and sat.
"It's possible. It would explain these confused feelings I have."
"What feelings?" he asked.
"Like a hole inside has been filled," she said.
"Like we should be together?"
She laid her head on his shoulder and inhaled him, "Like I've known you forever."
Jason put an arm around Rocky and they sat silently.
After ten or fifteen minutes, she shifted her body to face him.
"Your landlord?Do you think she can help us?"
"How?"
"Wa-ya. She knew you. Maybe she knows something more. Maybe there's a legend about the native family and the wolves? Maybe she can see something we can't."
"You want me to tell my new landlord that werewolves are descending on the town of Bloomington and only she can save the world?"
Rocky slapped his arm. "No. I just want to see if she knows."
He shook his head in the negative directions. "No, she said wolf was my spirit animal."
Rocky's eyes widened and she nodded, leading him and waiting for him to add two plus two.
"I want to meet her. I want to see what she says about me."
"Rocky, I don't?"
"I don't want to kill, Jason. In less than a week, I will change. And you will too. You know it's harder and harder each time."
"The change gets easier," he said.
"But the humanity, the control gets harder. And if there's a third out there somewhere, he's going through the same things. What if there are more?"
Jason sighed.
"That reminds me, I need to stock up on the Tylenol."
"Motrin works better," she said.
They laughed at the absurdity of their situation.
"We should get back. I need to catch a ride home."
"I can take you. I've got a car. We can even stop and get your Tylenol," she said.
"Motrin works better," he repeated.
He stood and offered her his hand. She took it and stood gracefully. She held onto his hand while they walked back to the trail. The sunlight was beginning to fade.
"You smell that?" he said.
"Mm hmm. Deer. My favorite."
"You know, I'm glad we're both monsters."
She laughed. "Oh yeah?"
"Yep. I probably wouldn't like you otherwise."
She slapped his arm again. "Yes you would."
The pair looked like a seasoned couple as they walked back toward the caf?. The conversation turned from fur and fangs to other, more normal topics.
"You from Indiana?"
"Born and raised."
Jason laughed.
"What is funny?"
"Something a friend once told me. Everybody in Indiana, is from Indiana."
"We do tend to stick around," she said. "How about you?"
"I have no idea where I was born. I was adopted young, two or three. My adopted parents' house burned. I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for any records."
"That's awful."
"Yeah. That was the worst time. It didn't help that I?I?"
He trailed off.
"You what?"
"They-my parents-were my?"
"Oh no. They were you're first kill?"
Jason wiped a tear from his leaking eyelid.
"And you burnt the house down to cover your tracks?"
"Something like that, yeah."
The story saddened him, but the fact that she knew, even without him spelling it out, made it more emotional.
"My only human kill. At least that I know of."
She rubbed his shoulder with understanding.
"Anyway, I was raised in Arizona. After that house burned, I ran. I lived in a friend's barn for a couple nights, hiding from everything."
"Everyone assumed you were also killed in the fire?"
"Right. So I hopped from place to place. I lived in New Mexico and a few places in Texas, finding work wherever I could. It seemed like I always went where I couldn't stand to be. So I've constantly moved on."
"So how did you wind up here?"
"A little girl pointed to the map in a bus station."
"Really?"
He nodded yes. She pointed to her car and unlocked the doors with her remote.
"Are you planning on leaving here any time soon?"
He smiled at her through glassy eyes.
"There's something different about this place," he said.
"Yep."
He looked at his new friend.
"You wanna tell me about your story? What was it like to be a ten year old monster?"
Rocky smiled and then frowned in pain. It was the first time he'd seen her without the trademarked smile. He wondered if her story was as painful as his.
"Not yet," she said.
"I didn't mean?"
"It's okay, just not yet."