by Brent Miller
Deflated, Garrick stood to walk out of Aldric’s office. It had become apparent that he wasn’t going to get any good answers, so he wanted to take a few minutes to decompress before training.
“Sit back down,” Aldric demanded.
“What is it?” Garrick obeyed, falling back into the seat as he asked the question.
“What possible reason did you have to go to that service?”
“I had to,” Garrick asserted. With nothing to back up his statement, Garrick silently hoped that Aldric wouldn’t ask him why.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted hesitantly. “I mean, she may have been a hunter, but she was still a human being. It didn’t feel right to just pretend she was never alive. I… I owed it to her.”
“To pay your debt to a liar, you walked into a building occupied solely by hunters?”
“It wasn’t my best plan. I just wanted to… I wanted to make it right.”
“I know you’re hurting over what happened to Chase,” Aldric sympathized. “You need to honestly think about this question, though. Were you trying to make up for what happened, or were you trying to get yourself killed?”
The question struck a nerve for Garrick. Aldric brought up a good point. Garrick had never contemplated suicide, but he couldn’t deny that there was a part of him which felt as though he deserved to be punished for his mistakes.
“I don’t know,” Garrick answered slowly.
“I understand.” Aldric leaned forward on his desk, his expression solemn as he looked at Garrick. Garrick tried to scan his eyes and for any hint of what Aldric was truly feeling. Garrick himself didn’t entirely understand – how could Aldric.
“We have to be smart. There is more at stake than just you and your emotional burdens here. Listen to me, son. Chase died for something he believed in. That isn’t your fault.”
“Yes, sir,” Garrick nodded, although he wasn’t fully ready to accept that yet.
“It gets easier,” Aldric consoled as Garrick stood once again.
“Killing people?”
“No. Living with it.”
Garrick sat on his couch, his head in his hands. He recognized that he’d fallen into a dangerous rut, and he wanted nothing more than to break out of it. It was clear that he’d make a lot of mistakes, but if he didn’t start being more careful, he was only going to make things worse. From that moment forward, he decided, he was going to have to move on and stop dwelling on what had happened – no matter how much it hurt.
As he stood, Garrick heard the knob on the front door. He wasn’t sure if his hearing was enhanced because of the wolf or his paranoia, but his eyes darted to the door. His mother, still in uniform, walked inside. Garrick relaxed a bit, but she wasn’t supposed to be home for hours, so he was still concerned.
“Hey Mom,” Garrick greeted cautiously. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she feigned a smile. “I just need to talk to you.”
“It couldn’t wait until after work?” Garrick tried not to sound on edge, but his heart was pounding. Her tone clearly indicated that there was a serious problem, so his mind ran through every possibility. It had to be about Chase – was there new evidence?
“Everything’s fine, Garrick,” she tried to comfort, but it was clear she was lying. “Come sit with me.”
The two of them walked back toward the couch and sat down. He wiped sweat off of his palms. Garrick hoped there was no reason to be nervous – this was his mother after all. Still, he just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was dreadfully wrong.
“When is the last time you talked to Chase?”
Without a decent answer, Garrick froze. He’d spent so much time trapped in guilt about what had happened and the fact that they’d had to cover it up, then worrying they’d left something behind, that he hadn’t come up with a decent alibi.
“I talked to him the day he ran away,” Garrick admitted. “But he didn’t tell me. I never would have let him do it.”
“And he wasn’t going camping with you?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“We recovered his texts,” she informed him. “You were the last person he talked to.”
Garrick’s heart skipped a beat. He searched his mind for anything that could have been said in those texts which was incriminating, but he was drawing a blank. He was relatively sure that they never used words like “transform” or “werewolf” just in case someone ever did manage to read their messages, but Garrick had no idea what they’d talked about the day before he disappeared.
“We talked a lot,” Garrick defended after a pause which was far too long.
“It said ‘I’m coming.’ You guys were talking about the camping trip beforehand. So why are you saying he didn’t go?”
“He didn’t,” Garrick tried to sound convincing, but he was talking to a detective and a mother.
“You’re hiding something. Just be honest with me, Garrick.”
“Mom, I don’t know where he is. He told me he was coming, but he didn’t. That’s all I know!”
“Why does it feel like that isn’t true?” Her eyes shimmered with a tear and her expression had a mixture of sadness and betrayal that was hard for Garrick to see.
“I don’t know,” Garrick replied. Maybe because it isn’t, he thought.
“I want to trust you.”
“Then do. I don’t know where he went, or why he left. All I know is that he didn’t show up. I swear.”
“His parents filed a missing person’s report. Since he’s still 17, he’s a minor, and a runaway. We’re not going to stop investing this, Garrick.”
“What do you think I’m hiding, Mom?”
“Just tell me if there is anything else you remember, okay? Even if you’re positive it won’t make a difference – that there’s no way it can help find him. Just tell me.”
“Okay, I will.”
She didn’t say anything else as she stood up and walked out the door. They weren’t in a town so small that everyone knew each other, but it was small enough that most people knew the police officers by name. She’d known Chase’s parents for years, and they were obviously putting a lot of pressure on the police – and specifically her – to find their son. Garrick just wished he could do anything at all to make it easier on her.
“She caught me in a lie,” Garrick explained to Cailean. Desperate for help, and with no one else to ask, Garrick had gone to see him as soon as his mother had left. Tyler wouldn’t have been able to provide advice on the werewolf world to which he was so new, and his relationship with Hayden was still too unstable for him to do anything to jeopardize it.
“Who?” Cailean asked, clearly confused at Garrick’s opening remark. Garrick had been thinking about his conversation on the walk to Cailean’s house, so he hadn’t thought about the fact that Cailean wasn’t aware of it.
“My mom. She asked me what I knew about Chase earlier, and I said he didn’t go camping, but she saw my texts where he said he was.”
“Seems easy enough to talk your way out of it.”
“I don’t know. It just feels like anything I say will just be incriminating.”
“That’s typically how it feels when you actually did something wrong.”
“Anyway, it’s wrong to lie to her. She’s my mother. I wouldn’t even be able to. I’ve been looking for a way to make things right, Cailean. Maybe this is it.”
“What are you talking about?” Concern quickly flooded Cailean’s voice.
“I can tell her. I’ll come clean. I’ll serve my time, just like I should.”
“No, you won’t, Garrick. You clearly haven’t thought this through. You just tell your mom you turned into a werewolf and killed your friend?”
“Of course not. I tell her we got in a fight while camping. Things got out of hand. I don’t know, maybe there was alcohol involved.”
“You can’t get drunk.”
“She doesn’t know that,” Garrick groaned, exas
perated. Cailean was getting hung up on the details. Obviously, Garrick was going to hide the parts of the story about his curse, but at least he’d pay for the murder that he committed. Cailean was trying to be helpful, but Garrick realized that he’d asked the best person for advice on the werewolf world, but the worst for the morals of the human one.
“Sorry,” Cailean muttered. “I forgot.” He wasn’t used to people close to him not knowing these subtle details about the lycanthropy. Of course he knew Garrick’s mom wasn’t aware he was a werewolf, but things like the rapid healing were just completely normal to Cailean, so it seemed he forgot humans weren’t aware of those things.
“The point is, I’ll tell her that things got out of hand and it was all an accident.”
“And then what, Garrick? You go to prison. In twenty-four days, you change. The guards are shocked, and they don’t know what to do. Then you tear through the bars and rip out their throats. You’re in the middle of a buffet, and you kill everyone in sight.
“Maybe, miraculously, the police officers manage to get enough bullets in you to keep you down for good. Then, the hunters hear about this, and they come in to wipe out any witnesses. The rest of the city is eradicated, and we just become another Roanoke.
“If you want to condemn yourself, Garrick, I can’t get in your way. But you’re not taking the rest of this pack – or this city – down with you.”
Garrick could hear genuine care in Cailean’s voice. Although he would never say it, he wasn’t only interested in the rest of the pack. He was worried for Garrick. He didn’t want him to do something that would ruin, or sacrifice, his life.
“So what should I do, then?” Garrick asked.
“You choose,” Cailean told him. “Either you tell her everything, or you tell her nothing.”
“Why would I tell her about us?”
“Because she would understand that it wasn’t your fault, and she’s on the inside. She’d be able to help.”
“But that puts her in danger.”
“I’m aware.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then it doesn’t sound like you have much of a choice.”
“But I can’t lie to her.”
“Lying is easy,” Cailean shrugged.
“Not for me, Cailean. I wasn’t raised like you – I was taught not to lie. Anyway, I’m just not good at it. And she’s a police officer. And my mom. She’d see right through me.”
“I’ll teach you.”
Garrick thought for a minute. Was lying a skill he could really be taught?
“I don’t want to know,” Garrick finally decided. “I try so hard to tell the truth, and now you’re trying to convince me to lie to my mom. That isn’t who I am. This curse changes me once a month, but I don’t want it to change who I am – not beyond that.”
“Having this as a tool won’t change you, Garrick. Because you’re a good person. Lying isn’t bad – it’s just how people use it that is bad. We use it to save ourselves from trouble, or to keep avoiding someone finding out we’ve done something to hurt them. It’s not inherently bad, and sometimes you have to do something you don’t want to if you want to protect the people close to you.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Garrick conceded, feeling foolish.
“Like I said, Garrick. You have two options. You tell her about us and put her in danger, or you lie to protect her. Honestly, either one works for me. It wouldn’t hurt to have her in our corner.”
Garrick was silent, but Cailean clearly knew what that meant.
“Come over before training tomorrow. I’ll teach you what I can.”
Chapter 17
Thirteen Months Ago
Garrick was lying on his back, tossing a ball in the air above him. His phone buzzed, vibrating the bed next to him. Once again, he tried to tune it out, ignoring what had to be the tenth text from Hayden in the past hour. Distracted, he missed the ball, and it clattered to the floor and rolled away. With a deep breath, he reached for his phone, but he dropped it back onto the bed before flipping it open. Every time he thought he had the strength to talk to her, he lost his resolve. Regardless of how hard he tried, Garrick couldn’t bring himself to talk about what had happened. Thinking about the monsters he’d seen that night, Garrick rubbed the scar on his left arm. Garrick felt like he had to find peace in his own mind with the monsters he’d seen before he would be able to talk to Hayden about any of it.
Deciding to try to take his mind off the werewolves, Garrick stood up. As he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, though, his mind fell back to the beasts. Garrick took his shirt off, tossing it to the ground beside him. He didn’t look any different. He still had the same eyes, the same hair, the same scrawny arms. Physically, his body still looked like his own, but for some reason, he felt changed. He couldn’t explain it, but somehow, he knew that he wasn’t the same as he used to be.
Garrick looked more closely at his arms. The little fat that had existed on his arms already seemed to be disintegrating, as if that scratch had somehow introduced something into his bloodstream that destroyed triglycerides. In reality, something was affecting his metabolism – he’d already noticed that.
Slowly, Garrick hovered his hand over his right forearm. When he was eight, he had broken his arm falling off a trampoline. The wound had healed completely, of course, but there was always a small scar from where they’d had to operate. It had barely been visible, but he’d always been able to find it. Now, though, even as he inspected his arm for that small scar – that piece of his personal history – he couldn’t find any trace of it. It had simply vanished overnight.
When he was fifteen, his appendix had burst. The doctors had to operate to remove it, leaving a somewhat sizable scar on his stomach. Looking at his shirtless body, though, Garrick was unable to locate that scar on his abdomen. The only scar that was left was the one from the creature that had attacked him.
Tearing himself from the mirror, Garrick grabbed his phone and walked to the bathroom and stood over the sink. In an attempt to clear his mind, he splashed water on his face. The second he looked up, though, he was trapped by looking at a mirror again, searching his face for any blemish. Thoughts were rushing through his brain faster than he could acknowledge them. Garrick’s phone vibrated again, so he set it down on the counter.
Garrick rubbed his chin, feeling the prickly hairs that he’d intended to shave days ago. Hopefully a task would start to pull him out of his mind. Garrick slowly grabbed his razor, mesmerized by the blades as they shimmered in the bathroom light. He turned on the sink and covered his face with more water before running the blades across his chin.
Garrick exhaled sharply as he felt a slight sting in his chin. It was rare that he cut himself, but he was unfocused on the task at hand. As hard as he tried to distract himself, his mind continued to linger somewhere he didn’t want it to be. He realized that shaving probably wasn’t the safest distraction from that.
Placing the razor down on the sink, Garrick rubbed his finger across the wound, wiping off the blood. He’d expected there to be more, but nothing else came. Leaning forward, he looked closely at his chin in the mirror as he searched for the cut, but he couldn’t find it.
He picked up the razor again, holding it in his hands. Well aware of the fact that it was a bad plan, Garrick still decided there was something that he had to do. He had to find out what was going on and what the implications were for him.
Garrick popped the blade out of the razor and held it between his thumb and index finger, slowly tightening his grip until he felt the blade pierce his skin. Instinctively, he flinched, dropping it into the sink. He ran his fingers under the faucet to rinse the blood off before examining the cut. The discovery that there was no cut wasn’t nearly as shocking as he assumed it should have been. Something in his body was changing, and he wanted to know just how much. Maybe small cuts were just healing more quickly, but a voice inside told him that he wasn’t seeing the big picture.
He turned his hand over and pushed the blade against the bottom of his palm. As the blade pierced his skin, he dug it deeper and dragged it down his forearm. He grunted quietly, trying to fight back the scream of pain that was building up. His mom wasn’t home, but he didn’t want the neighbors thinking he was getting murdered. Still, he couldn’t help but let out a quiet yell as his wrist opened up, spilling blood into the sink.
There was a deep gash in his arm. He held it over the sink and turned on the water, trying in vain to wash the blood away. He was bleeding faster than he could possibly hope to clean himself off. Garrick started to get dizzy and realized he had done something even more stupid than he’d originally thought. His mind raced as he thought of solutions. Mentally, he was in a dark place, and he wasn’t sure what was going on, but he still wanted the opportunity to find out.
Garrick could feel himself start to panic as the world became blurry. The increased heart rate only pushed more blood out of the wound. He could barely even see his own face in the mirror. He reached for his phone to call someone, but it slipped from his hand as he picked it up – tumbling to the floor. The phone was at his feet, but with his lack of coordination at that moment it might as well have been in another room.
Garrick grabbed the edge of the counter with his good arm, using all of the energy he could muster to stay standing. Strength started to drain from his muscles, so he leaned onto his elbows, placing as much weight as he could on the counter to keep from falling over.
Then the blood clotted. The running water rinsed away what was still on his skin, and no more poured from the wound. He could still see the deep cut – an open wound – but it wasn’t bleeding. Garrick wasn’t sure if he was delirious, but it looked like the blood he could see was thicker. Still dizzy, he managed to stand back up using the counter as support.
