The door to the truck opened, and a man with a long gray beard got out. He was wearing a dingy camouflage ball cap. “You the police?”
“No, sir,” said Dana, coming up next to Avery. “We’re the Sullivan Foundation.”
“You think you could move your car?” said Avery.
“What are you folks doing here?” said the man. “Tommy never hurt no one with his wolf.”
“No, we know that, sir,” said Dana. “It’s unrelated.”
“The car?” said Avery.
The man looked at the trailer. “I never wanted him to move in here, you know. I didn’t see why he couldn’t stay on the farm with his mother and his sisters and me.”
“You’re Tom’s father?” said Dana, remembering what Cole had said. That he thought Tom’s dad could have been the one to kill him.
“Was,” said the man. He adjusted the cap on his head. “I never wanted him to move out or start acting all funny, but that Randall character. He got inside my poor boy’s head. Changed him.”
Avery looked at Dana in alarm. “Cole Randall? Are you talking about Cole Randall?”
Dana was surprised too. She wondered if Cole had only said what he said to falsely implicate the man. What was going on here?
“Sure am,” said the man. “Randall understands the old ways. You folks at the SF don’t have a clue.”
“The old ways?” said Avery.
“Sir, Tom’s connection to Cole Randall is the reason we’re here,” said Dana. “Would you be willing to talk to us for a few minutes, answer a few questions for us?”
The man stroked his beard. “I don’t know about that. I didn’t expect anybody to be here when I showed up. Got things I was planning on taking care of.”
“Please,” said Avery. “It could be important. We’re talking about innocent lives here.”
The man looked back at his truck and then at the two of them. “I guess it couldn’t hurt. What I got to do can wait a while. What do you want to know?”
“How did your son know Randall?” said Dana.
“Randall came by the farm once,” said the man. “He stole my boy from me.”
“He kidnapped him?” said Avery.
The man laughed. “No. Nothing like that. Something worse.”
They waited, but the man didn’t elaborate.
“Can you explain to us what you mean by that?” asked Avery.
“I don’t know if I can,” said the man. “I mean, I don’t so much think it matters if I tell you about myself, but I don’t want to give up my girls. I don’t want them on some list, and I don’t want them locked up. There’s a way we been doing things here, for generations and generations. Way before that man Sullivan started trying to change everything.”
Dana’s jaw dropped. “Mr. Hathaway, are you a werewolf?”
The man shook his head. “I’m not saying another word.”
“Then that means that Tom was a genetic werewolf. He inherited it from you. He wasn’t bitten.”
“Wait,” said Avery. He lowered his voice. “Dana, where are you going with this? There are reports of his attack. He’s in the system at the SF.”
Mr. Hathaway clutched his elbows. “Oh, Tom was not an easy boy to raise. He was hell-bent on finding some other way to do things. He didn’t want to keep to the old ways, like he was meant to. He faked his way into the SF when he was only fifteen. Said he didn’t want to shift every month if he didn’t have to. I warned him. I told him that you folks would only make him suppress who he was. But he wouldn’t listen to me. He wouldn’t listen to his own father.”
Dana’s mind was churning. “You and your family are wolves. You’ve passed it down over generations, along with your ways of handling it.” They were like one of the families that Sullivan had studied all those years ago. They still existed. She couldn’t believe it. She thought the SF had reached all the werewolves.
“Look, lady, I’m not confirming that,” said Mr. Hathaway. “And you got no way of proving it.”
“We could smell you,” said Avery.
“Brooks,” Dana admonished. “Your family is safe. Don’t worry.”
Avery raised his eyebrows.
She shot him a meaningful glance.
He sighed. “All right. We’ll leave your family out of it. But honestly, the SF doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“You people break the bond,” said Mr. Hathaway. “You break the natural bond between a father and a son. Between a mother and a son. And we had to work hard to reestablish it. Then that Randall came in, while it was all still weak, and he bonded that boy to himself.”
Dana didn’t understand. “We don’t break any bonds, Mr. Hathaway. We simply teach people to control the beast inside them. That’s all.”
“That control does break it,” he said. “Clean messed up my Tommy. Messed him all up. I couldn’t reach him. He was bonded to that Randall. Hooked to him the way a boy should only be hooked to his father. And I had to do it, you see. Because that Randall, he was a bad one. I don’t know what he would have made my Tommy do.”
“You had to do what?” said Avery.
“He was as good as gone already,” said the man. “He was lost. It’s what the old ways demand. You leave your family, you’re a threat.” The man opened up the door to his truck. “Now, if you excuse me, I got something I need to take care of. Reason I came here.” He pulled out a shotgun and shut the door of the truck.
Dana and Avery both stepped back at the sight of the gun.
“Hold on, sir,” said Avery. “We don’t mean—”
“Ain’t for you,” said the man. “For myself. Did what I had to do. I took care of poor Tommy. But I can’t live with myself now.” The man stalked off towards the woods.
Avery took a step after him, then turned back to Dana. “Do you think he...?”
Dana nodded.
“We should call the police,” he said. “He’s a murderer.”
The man disappeared into the trees.
“They wouldn’t make it in time,” said Dana. “We should go after him with the tranq gun.” She looked at the car.
There was a loud shot, echoing through the trees, reverberating off the cabin.
Dana cringed.
Avery winced.
* * *
Sheriff Hanley eyed them with suspicion. “I just gotta say that it’s a little strange the two of you being around every time a Hathaway dies.”
Dana sputtered. He wasn’t really accusing them, was he?
“But I guess you two can go,” said the sheriff.
Dana and Avery gratefully made their way to their car. Avery had to pull out into the yard to get around Mr. Hathaway’s truck. He didn’t bother asking the sheriff if it was okay. He just did it. It had been a long afternoon. After calling in Mr. Hathaway’s suicide, they’d been detained for questioning. But no one had bothered to question them for over an hour, so she and Avery had been wandering around, trapped there. It had given them some time to read the letters from Cole, so that was something.
But the letters didn’t say much. Mostly, Cole seemed to be reassuring the kid that it was okay to strike out on his own, away from his father. It was a fine sentiment, but it didn’t much help them figure out how Cole was getting these rogues to shift. If Cole was even doing it at all. They couldn’t find a shred of evidence to connect him to all of it.
At any rate, it seemed like all of this was a dead end. But it was still puzzling.
They had been driving down the road in silence for ten minutes when Avery asked, “What are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering about the stuff Tom’s dad said,” Dana said. “I know it doesn’t really have anything to do with finding out how Cole is communicating with these rogues, but it doesn’t make any sense.”
“I can’t help but think about it either,” said Avery. “I had no idea that there were still wolves living out here that the SF didn’t know about. And that they actively resisted the SF’s training. Are they cra
zy?”
“Well, they must be doing something to keep from killing people on full moons,” said Dana, “because otherwise, we would have known about them.”
“Right,” said Avery. “Maybe they lock themselves up or something.”
Dana fiddled with her seatbelt. “It’s weird all right.”
“And he kept going on about the old ways. I mean, what the heck is that?”
“I don’t know. But I guess he and his family must have traditions or something.” She shifted in her seat to face him. “I was reading some of Fredrich Sullivan’s articles from the early twentieth century, and when he was studying wolves then, they had really intricate rituals and things. So maybe these guys are just like those old wolves from back then. They never embraced the SF, and they never tried anything different.”
Avery glanced at her and then looked back at the road. “Makes sense. And I guess Tom Hathaway wanted to enter the twenty-first century. Who could blame him?”
“No one,” she said. “Well, I guess his father did.”
“Yeah, see, but that was confusing, didn’t you think? Because the old guy said that going to the SF broke a bond between him and Tom, but that he was able to build it back up. But then he said that Cole Randall somehow made a bond with Tom.”
“Oh, you’re right. And he also said that Cole came by the farm.”
“We’re going to have to talk to Randall,” said Avery. “We have to know why he came here and what he did to Tom.”
“I guess so. But who knows if he’ll even say anything.” Dana didn’t want to reveal that she’d confirmed that Cole did indeed remember Tom Hathaway and that he’d appeared shocked by the man’s death. Furthermore, he’d predicted correctly that the father would be the one who’d killed Tom.
“He might talk to you,” said Avery. “Maybe we’ll have to get King to let you down there.”
Dana didn’t say anything.
“You’ve been doing better, right? You’d be okay seeing him?”
“Um...” She had been seeing him. And she was pretty sure it was making everything worse. “I could talk to him.”
Avery flexed his hands on the steering wheel. “You know you said before that at some point you might be able to talk about what happened with him.”
She remembered that. Back when Avery was asking all those questions about sexual assault. “I did.”
“Is that point now or is it still too soon?”
She sighed. “Is this really what we should be focusing on right now?”
“Guess it’s still too soon.”
“Brooks, I’m just saying that we should be trying to figure out what Mr. Hathaway was talking about, not worrying about what happened between Cole and me.”
Avery made a disbelieving snorting sound. “See, you make it sound like you went on a date with him or something. He chained you up in his basement and tried to kill you, Dana. You do realize that?”
“He didn’t kill me,” she said. “He couldn’t kill me.”
“So that makes him okay?”
“No.” She glared out the window of the car. Outside, it was springtime, and the tiny leaves on the trees were bright, bright green. She looked back at Avery. “What do you think about the kind of stuff that Sullivan said in the beginning? Stuff about packs.”
“Packs?” said Avery. “It’s bullshit. He thought of werewolves as inferior—little better than animals. He made that crap up to make us look like beasts.”
“I know.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? You’re changing the subject on me.”
“I’m not,” she said. “Tom’s dad said that Tom was bonded to Cole. Wouldn’t you say I’m bonded to him too?”
Avery was quiet for a minute. “I guess so. But I don’t see where you’re going with this.”
“Maybe Sullivan wasn’t wrong. Maybe wolves do form packs, and those packs have bonds.”
“No way, Gray. We live in the eastern regional SF headquarters, and there are more werewolves there than anywhere else. If we naturally formed into packs, don’t you think there would be packs? But I don’t have any otherworldly bonds to anyone else. And neither do you.”
“I’ve got something with Cole. Something I don’t like. Something I don’t seem to be able to control.”
“Yeah,” said Avery. “But you’re also mentally ill. I mean, no offense.”
“Look, Sullivan said that packs were generally families. In rare cases, they weren’t related, but the wolves stayed close to the wolf that had bitten and changed them.”
“Then you and I should be close to the wolf that bit us. We aren’t.”
“What if the SF training does something that wipes out all those instincts? What if all the shifting into werewolf form that Cole made me do sort of... woke them back up again inside me?”
“Cole didn’t bite you, though,” said Avery. “You’re drawn to him, but you aren’t related to him, and he didn’t bite you.”
He was right. She bit her lip.
“For that matter,” said Avery, “he didn’t bite Tom Hathaway either. And Tom isn’t related to him.”
“No,” said Dana. “But it fits with what his father was saying. He said that he and Tom were bonded until the SF undid the bond. Then he said that Cole bonded to Tom. Somehow, Cole supplanted his natural bonding to his father. It’s like... like Cole’s an alpha wolf.”
“You didn’t just say that,” said Avery.
“He’s an alpha, and he’s making a pack,” said Dana.
“And you’re in the pack?”
“Maybe,” said Dana.
“There are no alpha wolves. I mean, unless you’re talking about actual animals. We’re human. We’re not animals.”
“Humans are animals, Brooks,” she said. “You’ve read all those studies about the similarities of chimps and people, right? I mean, is it really that crazy to think that werewolves might function like wild wolves?”
“It’s insulting,” said Avery. “No one controls me. I control myself. I don’t have an alpha wolf keeping me in line.”
“I don’t think it’s like that. Alphas can force betas to shift, and they can call members of their pack. I don’t think they can control anyone.”
“You just said Cole was controlling you.”
“I think he calls me,” she said. “Maybe that makes me want to be around him.”
“Who says alphas can do this stuff?”
“Fredrich Sullivan.”
“Who’s been proved to be wrong by lots of people,” said Avery. “I just don’t think so, Gray. It’s too weird. Too far-fetched.”
* * *
The moon was full outside the window of Dana’s apartment. It was a big, round moon, hanging in the sky with its blank, white face. And the phones were silent.
Silent.
Dana couldn’t remember the last full moon in which nothing had happened.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. It actually happened once or twice a year. There would be a random full moon in which there were no rogues, no new werewolves, and no one actually died. Everything was quiet.
Generally speaking, Dana welcomed those rare, quiet full moons. It was usually a nice break in a stretch of busyness, a sort of gift from the universe, time to get everything squared away before things got crazy again.
Avery certainly seemed to be looking at it that way. As each hour rolled by, he texted her celebratory updates. “Still no rogues. Yee-haw!” and various other sentiments.
Dana didn’t want it to be quiet. She wanted it to be busy and crazy. She wanted there to be no time to think.
Because Cole had told her to go to his house, to lie on his bed, and to...
Oh, God.
She wasn’t going to do it. It was stupid. It was embarrassing. It was gross. She didn’t do stuff like that.
She kind of wanted to do it.
Whenever she thought about it, her jeans started to feel pleasantly tight.
Oh, God.
Dana didn’t play sexy games. Honestly, she didn’t have a lot of time in her life for sex. She’d had five sexual partners in her life. (If you didn’t count Cole. And he didn’t count. Wolf sex was not actual sex. No way.) Three of them had been long-term relationships, but none of those relationships had been particularly centered on sex.
It wasn’t like she didn’t do it. It was just that it wasn’t, you know... kinky. Or whatever.
Sex had always happened at night before bed, between the sheets in someone’s bed. With the lights off. She liked doing it, but she didn’t like talking about it. Or really thinking about it all that often. Her whole life, she’d had trouble achieving orgasm from penetration alone, but it wasn’t something she brought up. She didn’t fake orgasms either. It was part of who she was.
No one except Hollis had ever even noticed, and he’d made it into a big deal. He wanted to be the guy who always got her off, every time. Which meant—and she wasn’t proud of it—she’d faked it a few times for him. Because he wouldn’t give up until she had an orgasm. The pressure he put on the whole thing was annoying.
She often just waited until he was gone and finished herself off.
Before Cole, she’d treated masturbation as a kind of necessary chore, kind of like taking out the garbage.
Once or twice a month, she’d have a little urge. She knew what it meant. She had the equipment to take care of it—a tiny bullet vibrator she’d purchased online. She would turn the thing on, close her eyes, and wait until she came. That done, she could get back to her life.
But in the past six months, after Cole, things had become more complicated. Her fantasies were more frequent and more detailed. Her urges and her releases were more intense. It disturbed her, but it also pleased her. She’d never experienced this before, and—though she knew that Cole was an inappropriate partner—the new sensations she’d experienced had been... fun.
Thinking about it made Dana feel flushed and embarrassed, like a giggly girl.
She was appalled at the idea of being asked to go someplace and touch herself.
On the other hand, it excited her. It was another level of sensuality she’d never explored. Cole wouldn’t be there when she did it. (Not that she was going to do it.) She’d be alone. All on her own. But by suggesting it to her, he’d somehow become part of her own private, fantasy world. That aroused her.
He wouldn’t actually take pleasure in what she was doing. He wouldn’t be there. But the thought of her pleasuring herself pleased him. That aroused her too.