I said kill him!”
I crossed my legs and pretended to see a piece of lint on my pants leg that I picked at. There was no one else in the room that he could order. It was just the Boss, Sweet, Carmen and me. I stood up and walked to Carmen and led her to a chair beside mine. I smiled at her. She watched me, probably wondering what the hell was going to happen next. I sat down next to her. Sweet was prostrate on the floor, crying, bawling like a child.
“You’re my goddamned dog! You do as I say!”
I looked at him, trying to get my own temper under control. I wanted to let my monster loose on him, to revel in his blood and entrails but instead I said “It was a good plan—for the moment, for a few years, but you didn’t think long-term, did you? Not long, long-term, anyway.”
“What are you talking about?” the Boss asked.
“I was coming back to pay you!”
“No one thought about the age factor did they? Until it was too late,” I said.
The Boss hung his head.
I turned to her. “Carmen, I’m muscle for him. I collect payments from gambling and loansharking. I’m effective. The payback rate is at one hundred percent since I’ve worked for the Boss. Well, not quite one hundred percent. There was one heart attack that happened when I went to work on a client. It was an unavoidable and unfortunate death. It happened because I’m much more than just muscle for a kneecap banker. I’m a werewolf.”
“But,”—she started, until I laid my hand on top of hers. It was the first time I had touched her and I felt something...good. I looked into her eyes and I knew then who she was. I had to wrap up all of the loose ends.
“I’m just guessing here but I think you met Sweet at the track, am I right?” She didn’t say anything but she blushed and smiled. She was on the run and needed money and a place to hide. Sweet provided both. The fact that I ran across her scent while looking for numb-nuts was pure coincidence. I knew I was on the right track.
“One question, Sweet,” I said turning to him, “you had all that money why didn’t you just leave? I hear the south of France is wonderful this time of year.”
“That was my fault, I wanted to find you,” Carmen said staring at me.
“Me?”
The seconds ticked off and she didn’t elaborate so I didn’t push.
I turned back to my boss. I knew I needed to control my anger with him but it wouldn’t be easy. I took a deep breath. It was time to finish this mess but the enormity of this situation pushed all sense of urgency away. Quietly, slowly, I said “Somehow, someway twenty years ago, either you or one of your guys captured a werewolf.”
The Boss’ eyes were suddenly reptilian slits.
“Werewolves are almost extinct but somehow you caught one. And you had him chained up in one of your warehouses. That’s when one of you guys had the bright idea of turning children into werewolves, training them until they reached adulthood, training them to bow down to the alpha dog, training them to obey their respective bosses. Maybe you bargained his freedom for his cooperation. Or maybe you tortured him. How many children were there? Ten? Fifteen?”
“Thirty one,” the Boss replied. I was surprised at his calmness and at the high number. But there was anger boiling just below his surface…and mine. He didn’t like to be questioned, especially by his slave. It was okay because his anger didn’t bother me now. His anger was no longer a factor in my decisions.
My life, up to this point, like everyone else’s, was a photo album that had a logical progression and told a story. But the pictures in my album were blurry, off-center and missing several pages and pictures. I was a young boy of nine when I came to be the property of the Boss. I was made to fear him through physical and mental torture and now that part of my life was ending.
“You bought thirty-one kids?” It was a rhetorical question spoken aloud to wrap my mind around the number.
“I didn’t buy thirty-one children. I bought you.”
“But there were thirty-one… I was part of the thirty-one. You tortured me,” I said through clenched teeth as the moment started to reach an emotional realization, an emotional crescendo. “You wouldn’t let me see my family!”
“I had to,” the Boss said. “You had to accept me and only me as your alpha. I had no choice in the matter.”
“No choice?” Carmen said. Her tone was indignant. She stood up but I placed my hand on her arm, calming her, guiding her back into her seat.
I swallowed my own anger and continued. I needed more answers but I was getting tired. I had been swallowing my anger and fear for years—too many years. I was bursting at the seams—drowning, trying to contain it all.
“It must’ve some kind of hard work to make sure that none us met, that none of us ran across one another,” I said.
“Not really. Each boss has an area. You never went past Highway 81 or the interstate did you?”
Damn.
“I was gonna pay you back!!”
“Shut up!” I said.
“How much did you pay for me?” He didn’t answer. “How much?” I demanded.
“Your father sold you for a case of whiskey,” he said almost too low to hear.
“A case…? You stole my childhood! You kept me from my mother!” I stood up, my hands clenched, my shoulders bunched, my jaw tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed. I started to turn but it was against my will. My control had slipped. My heart beat hard against my breastbone and my breath deepened. I grew several inches in height, my teeth lengthened and I wanted blood badly, but then I felt her hand on my forearm. Her light touch meant a lot to me. The sight of her made the anger depart—disperse as though it was steam from a just doused fire. I shrank back to my normal size but my heart still beat in staccato bursts. My shirt was in tatters. I flung it to the ground and wondered who was the bigger monster, the Boss or me.
“I was gonna pay you back!!”
“Shut up,” the Boss said. His voice sounded strained.
I closed my eyes and when I opened them I caught Carmen’s movement out of the corner of my eye. She was the only good thing about this whole mess. I got down on one knee and grasped Carmen’s hand and ignored the Boss. The room was silent. “When the Boss sent me to go look for numb-nuts over there, I crossed your scent,” I said to her, “and it smelled…it smelled like heaven, but there was something else that caught my attention and it drove me up a wall: All of the children were made by the same werewolf. The scent that I picked up, the thing that drove me crazy was the scent of the pack. You belong to my pack.”
The Boss’ jaw dropped. Apparently, he didn’t know Carmen. He probably hadn’t seen her since she was bitten.
I had a sudden flash of memory that took me back to a damp warehouse where I woke up after being knocked senseless by my father, where I saw other children, where I was roughly grabbed and dragged to another room. I remember seeing the Boss standing off to one side with other men, talking. His face was unlined. His hair was jet black and slick.
Certain visual cues always stand out for different reasons to different people. The Boss’ hair, a slicked back pompadour was something that stood out to me when I first saw it as a child. I had unconsciously taken that memory, that photo out of my photo album, and buried it so deep that it only resurfaced when I saw the boss and his new dye job.
At the warehouse, I fought and cried in vain. I remembered seeing a dark-haired girl cowering in a corner—Carmen. She shook and cried just like I did but then the pain of teeth, of biting and my skin being ripped by a chained werewolf, sent any coherent thought scattering. Pain, fear, and tears obscured the rest of the memory.
My eyes focused on the room again but I was disoriented, sweating…nauseous. I swallowed the bile that tried to rise, closed my eyes and counted to five. I had a job to do.
I stood up and faced the Boss and said: “I think that she had the same problem I’m having now. My alpha is weak. I smell your weakness. I think that this scene is probably playing
out in all the territories where werewolves are used for muscle.” I leaned forward, my palms on his desk, tense and ready. “What does a wolf do when his alpha is weak?” I said through clenched teeth. There was anger, indignation and pain in my voice. My father didn’t want me and sold me off like a piece of unwanted furniture. My mother died while I was working for the Boss. I didn’t know where my brother was.
“What does a wolf do when his alpha is weak?”
No one moved. I saw a bead of sweat trickle down the Boss’ temple. I heard his heart thundering in his chest. I started to grow and darken with hair.
The Boss went for his gun he kept in his desk drawer but he was fat, slow and old. His hands fumbled with the center drawer but he managed to get it open. His hand wrapped around the handle as I leapt at him. I changed in midair, my pants falling away. I landed on top of him, knocking him out of his chair to the floor. The gun went off as it was thrown from his hand. The bullet flew harmlessly into the back wall. The smell of acrid silver filled the air.
The world was red. All of the scents that floated in the room sharpened in texture and tone as my back and limbs grew wider, knotting and cording with muscle. My jaws grew to a size that would easily accommodate a human head. My paws pinned his arms. Razor-sharp talons grew and scraped against the floor as he struggled. I spread my mouth and placed my teeth under his chin. I smelled his terror, his tumors growing out of control. I