“That’s not what I was going to say.” She takes a deep breath. “Daniel, you don’t understand the kind of danger we’re in. These others… they’re hunting for you. They want to kill you.”
“Let them. I don’t deserve to live.”
“Stop being so selfish!” Kayla screams at me. “Do you have any idea what will happen to the rest of us if you get killed? Do you?”
I shake my head. I don’t even know who she means by “the rest of us.”
“It will be bad, Daniel. That’s why we need you to come back. We need you to protect us.”
I laugh. “Protect you? I can’t even stop myself from killing – ”
“If you mention that kid one more time, I will smack you,” Kayla says. “This is serious. You’re the strongest wolf any of us has ever seen. You took on three full-grown wolves by yourself on the night of your initiation.” Her brown eyes gaze into mine. “You could save us all.”
-42-
Our families form one of the oldest packs in Montana, Kayla tells me. They emigrated from Europe in the early 1800s, coming to America to escape the eradication of wolves. Long before the Westward Expansion, our families disappeared into the forest and headed west.
“You’re saying we were the first families to live in Montana?”
“No,” Kayla says. There were others who lived in Montana. Mostly the Crow Indians and some other tribes, and some missionaries. Our families formed a secluded settlement, first in caves in the hills and later in houses. Eventually other settlers came and our families became less antisocial, began to mingle with both the natives and the other folk that arrived.
“Wait, so that’s how it happened, right? We got some Indian blood wendigo thing–”
“Don’t be racist, Daniel. This has nothing to do with Indians. Wendigos aren’t even close to what we are.”
“They aren’t werewolves?”
“No, that’s just popular culture. Wendigo are cannibalistic spirits–”
“And that’s different from me how?”
“Just shut up, okay? The wolf is in our blood. Our blood, not Indian blood. Got it?”
Some of the other families interbred with the natives and with the pioneers. The bloodline spread. The werewolf gene got weaker, but it spread, so now there are three packs in Montana. Us, and two others.
“The others aren’t as strong as us. We keep to our own. Our blood is pure.”
“But?”
“They have numbers on their side. It’s down to you and me.”
There were two families left in our pack: the Connors and the Roulfs. My father, my mother, myself, and Uncle Red were the Connors; Uncle Buck, Kayla, and her mother were the Roulfs, her mother being my mother’s sister. A third family, the Loupes, had died off decades ago, after the patriarch went crazy and killed his mate and most of his offspring. Those who survived disappeared into the forest and never came back, except for one: my grandmother.
“How many surviving offspring are we talking?”
“Back then it was normal to have ten or more children. Most people had that many because of high infant mortality, but not us. Our babies were very resilient. There were at least four survivors, if you include your gramma.”
“So three kids disappeared? What happened? Did they join one of the other packs?”
“No one knows. Mom told me they tried for weeks to track them down, but eventually the pack decided to give up. It wasn’t completely unexpected. Incest leads to a lot of birth defects… including insanity.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Don’t even say it, Daniel. You’re not crazy. Trust me.”
The Connors and the Roulfs had done their best to avoid the fate of the Loupe family. The pack decreed that no one closer than a second cousin would marry. That was okay for one generation, since my grandmother was around. After that, it was harder. My father and Uncle Buck had gone out and sniffed out women with the wolf blood. My mother and her sister went to a high school in a neighboring town. They were descended from one of the original five families, the Randells, but the process is different for a woman than for a man.
“For males, they change on their thirteenth birthday. Girls only change when they get their first blood.”
“Wait, so that’s what they were doing when they dragged me up to that mountain? They knew I was going to change? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“It’s complicated.”
Sometimes, for reasons unknown, the change doesn’t happen. The pack decided a long time ago to not tell the children until they came of age. That kept the children safe in the case of outsiders asking questions, and if the change never happened, the children grew up not knowing. It was better this way.
“How is that better? Don’t you think it would have helped me out a little to know what I was in for?”
“Would you have believed it?”
It is tradition for the male to change in the company of the other males in the pack, a sort of initiation ceremony. The other males are there to subdue the new wolf and teach it the ways of the pack.
“It wasn’t quite like that.”
“No?”
“I thought they were going to attack me.”
Part of the initiation ceremony is also a dominance test: if the new wolf can overtake the pack leader, he becomes the Alpha.
“Okay, that sounds more like it.”
Again, for girls, it’s different. The female may get her first blood during the day, but she won’t change until that night. The other females of the pack are usually able to tell when a girl is about to change for the first time by her scent. Their initiation ceremony is a bit different. The girl is dressed in a loose gown and led into the forest. The other females talk her through the change, telling her the lore of the pack and explaining everything that is happening to her. Sometimes they are able to share these experiences through a kind of telepathy.
“Is that how you got into my dreams? Can all wolves do that?”
“Yes… although you won’t be able to do it until you’re in control of your wolf.”
The females remain in human form except for the new wolf’s mother, who also changes. They bathe the new wolf in a kind of baptism, while the mother licks her cub clean.
“It was like being born into a new person. A stronger person.”
“Wish my experience had been like that.”
For years the males and females had been at odds about different traditions of the pack. The men were becoming more violent. The females usually found it easier to ignore the violence, especially after Fallon Loupe killed his wife.
“How do you know all this, if our mothers didn’t grow up with the pack?”
“Your grandmother passed it down to our mothers on her deathbed. She told them…”
“What? What did she tell them?”
“She said you were special. You were the one who could save us all.”
My grandmother died when I was three.
“I know this is a lot to take in, Daniel. You should have been told this all a long time ago.”
“I still don’t understand what I can do about anything. All of this sounds like our pack was in trouble even before I killed our fathers and Uncle Red. If there’s really only you and me left, what can I really do against an enemy pack?”
Kayla rests her head on my shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”
-43-
I lie awake while Kayla sleeps, her scent of
forest fur winter
filling my nostrils. I shouldn’t like this. I shouldn’t have my lips pressed against her bare shoulder where my t-shirt has slipped off her small frame. I shouldn’t want this.
But I do.
Sometime in the dim hour before sunrise she awakens and slides out of bed. “I need to go get more supplies,” she tells me, shrugging on my jacket.
“I could go.”
“No. It’s not safe for you yet.”
My arms curl around the cold space beside me after she?
??s gone.
* * *
Candi returns a short time later. “Still in bed? Must be nice.” She plops down on the mattress, kicking her shoes off and ripping off her top at the same time. Her sudden flesh wakes a feeling deep inside. I reach for her.
She swats my hand away with a slap.
“Unless you magically found some money since last night, this is off-limits.” She indicates her pale torso.
With some struggling, she pulls off her pleather pants and settles into Kayla’s spot on the bed wearing only her underwear. I would have expected a prostitute to be wearing a thong or a g-string, but instead it’s grayish cotton underpants, stained, the elastic loose.
“Mm, nice and warm.” She wiggles back until her body fits into the spoon of mine and pulls the hand she slapped around her waist. “No funny business now.”
In a matter of seconds her breathing slows and I know she’s asleep. She smells like cheap cologne and night air and sex.
I’m afraid to move lest I disturb her. How can she feel safe lying in a bed with some stranger? The longer my hand rests against the flat plain of her stomach, the more I think about what lies to the north and south of that plain. My palm sweats, itching to travel. The longer I force my hand to stay there, the harder I get. In the darkness I can’t tell if my vision is blacking out, but there’s a familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach
Nausea?
I rip myself away from her. I curl up on the edge of the mattress, hugging myself violently. My ragged fingernails dig into my arms. It’s a good long while before the hot trembling turns to cold shivering.
When the cold gets to me, I yank the blanket away from Candi and wrap myself up.
“Hey!” she squawks. “Hello? I’m practically naked here?”
I don’t respond to her. The blanket is between my teeth.
“Dan.” She pulls at the blanket. “Dan. Come on. It’s colder than a witch’s tit in here.”
The comparison doesn’t exactly help. I start trembling again.
This time when she speaks her voice is soft. “Dan.” Her hand slides under the blanket and she inserts herself. Her naked form against my back. I can feel the soft lumps of her breasts through the material of my sweatshirt.
It’s when she reaches around me that I tense up.
“What?” she demands. “Oh, I get it. You’re a virgin.”
I say nothing.
“Whoa-ho!” she crows. “I haven’t met a virgin since I was a virgin!”
My fingers grip the blanket, more determined than ever not to let her have an inch.
“Oh, come on. Don’t be so sensitive.” She tries to snuggle back under the blanket but we end up wrestling for it. She yanks at it until I’m no longer facing the wall but the ceiling and her topless glory. I look away. “What is your problem?” she says.
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, right.” She glares at me, but when she figures out I’m not giving up, she changes tack. “Come on, Danny. I’ll freeze if I don’t have a teeny tiny bit of that blanket. You don’t want me to freeze, do you?” She puffs out her lower lip.
I parcel out half of the blanket and she climbs under. “You’re so sweet,” she coos, pinching my cheek. I flick her hand away. “So kind of you to share MY blanket.”
“Sorry,” I grumble.
Only a few moments later, I feel Candi’s hands slide around my waist. I try to ignore it, but she keeps going. I push her hand away and try to move so she’s not touching me.
“Stop being so cold, Danny,” she whispers. “Your stubbornness is turning me on.” Her hands return and her body presses against my back again.
I don’t really need the blanket right now.
“Just loosen up.” Her breath blows in my ear.
Then she’s kissing me, her lips warm and moist on my neck. She traveling up along my jaw line then finally gets to my mouth. By that time I’m kissing her back.
She slides on top of me. It feels nice to kiss a girl. I’ve never done it before. I let myself go until Candi comes up for air. “Now that’s more like it,” she purrs. Then she hooks her fingers into the waistband of my jeans.
I shove her away. She lands at the end of the mattress. “Don’t do that,” I tell her.
It was instinctive. My heart is hammering away and my fingers dig into the fabric beneath me. What was I thinking? What if I had lost control… blacked out? I have no idea what would happen if I had sex. All I know is I’ve spent nights in hotels with men that I don’t remember, except for the blood bath after.
“What’s your problem,” she snaps. “Are you gay?”
“Just because I’m the first guy you’ve ever met who doesn’t want to fuck you right away doesn’t make me gay.”
Candi crosses her arms and puts on her pouty face. “Don’t you find me a little bit attractive? A teensy weensy little bit?”
“Well, sure,” I say uncomfortably.
“So what’s the problem?”
“Look, I… I just don’t think it’s a good idea.” In fact, I think it’s a really bad idea.
“Why?”
I go over in my head the reasons that I can’t tell her: I’m a werewolf, I might kill you, you’re a prostitute, you might have an STD, you might get pregnant… actually…
“You might get pregnant,” I say.
She laughs. “Yeah, right. I take precautions.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I have some condoms if you’re really worried. I also know where the Planned Parenthood is and they’ve given me the morning after pill a bunch of times before.”
“That sounds safe.”
“And, I mean, even if I did get pregnant, so what? You’re kinda cute. Our baby would come out cute. We could get some money from welfare. Lots of the other girls have babies.”
“What other girls?”
“You think I’m the only girl working a corner? Have you lived in a cave your entire life?”
I don’t say anything.
Candi pulls the blanket around herself and curls up in it, facing away from me. Now I’m the one in the cold. That’s fine. I need to cool off.
“You know,” Candi says, “it kind of hurts my feelings that you don’t want to have babies with me.” She giggles. “It is SO obvious you’re a virgin.”
My face burns. I turn so my back is to Candi’s back.
I am anything but tired.
-44-
“Have fun while I was gone?” Kayla announces, waking me out of a bored doze. Nothing else to do but sleep. Too cold. No food. Several times I wished for that book I’d stolen from the library in Broken Bow. Too bad it was in my backpack, with Kayla, the whole time. Too dark to read now anyway.
“I finally got more clothes.” She drops the crammed backpack on the mattress. I notice she’s wearing a new pair of fuzzy gray mittens that smell like the bottom of a box left in storage. Between her knit hat pulled down over her ears and forehead, and the fleece scarf that covers her mouth, all I can see of her is her red nose and brown eyes.
The backpack oozes other scents just as strange. Smoky car seat. Mothballs. A faint gardenia-scented perfume. “Socks. Long underwear. Regular underwear.” Kayla pulls these garments from the backpack as she names them. “Flannel-lined jeans. Fleece shirt. Down vest.”
She looks at me. “What are you waiting for? Start stripping.” She grins. “Now.”
I smile back, but wait to see what else she has.
“You think I’m kidding? Come on. You need to put this stuff on.”
“Okay.” I feel more than a little weird taking off my clothes in front of Kayla. Plus it’s freezing, so I’m hopping around trying to get my pants down as fast as I can. I grab the long underwear.
“Daniel, you need to put on the new underwear.” She shakes the package at me. “Yours smells like… well, let’s just say I can tell you haven’t done your laundry in a few weeks.”
“Okay,” I say, accepting the underwear. She continues to wat
ch me. “Um… maybe you could turn around or something?”
“What, are you shy?” Kayla grins. I suddenly get the idea that she was hoping to see me take off my underwear. But she turns around.
To be safe, I turn my back to her while I change. When I’m done putting on the underwear and the socks and the long underwear and turn back to get one of the new pairs of pants, Kayla’s watching me with that grin still on her face.
I can feel myself blushing and I can’t seem to meet her eyes. I have a harder time than usual putting on a simple pair of pants. As I’m fumbling with the button on the fly, Kayla’s fingers dance up my spine.
“You need some help?”
“No!” My voice is a little too loud and I jump away from her touch. There is a tense moment.
“Here’s a clean shirt.” She hands it to me. I glance up at her eyes. She avoids mine and her smile is gone.
I take off the scraps of the shirt I’m wearing.
“You’ve healed up pretty quick,” Kayla remarks. I raise my eyebrows. She gestures to her neck. “The bruises. They’re gone.”
My fingers explore my neck, pushing where only yesterday it was so sensitive. No pain at all. How long since I had that rope around my neck? Has it really only been two days?
“Yeah. I guess they’re all healed up.” I pull the thermal shirt on. I feel warmer already.
“You need to eat more,” Kayla says, eyeing my ribs. “And I don’t mean broccoli soup.”
I lean over to see if she has anything in the backpack I haven’t sniffed out yet. There’s a faint trace of hamburger but it’s coming from Kayla’s breath. “You didn’t bring any food back?”
“I barely had enough money to get clothes for you. I had to steal the socks and underwear.”
“But you had enough money to go to McDonald’s.”
She stares at me. “It was Wendy’s. I guess you don’t need any training for your sense of smell.”
My stomach growls. Or maybe I’m growling at her.
“Look, see? Now you have warm clothes and we can both leave here and get something to eat. Okay?”
My eyes narrow, but not before the darkness pulses in and out.
“Daniel, calm down. Changing now isn’t going to help anyone.”
I swallow the bile that has risen up in my throat. That faint wisp of hamburger slathered with special sauce and tomatoes is driving me crazy.