Brothersong

by TJ Klune

  Kelly said, “Go home, Carter. Before you can’t.”

  I didn’t look at him. “I’m close. Closer than I’ve ever been.”

  He sighed.

  Only the Alpha returned. She had a piece of paper in her hand, and I had to stop myself from ripping it from her. She held it out between two fingers. When I reached for it, she pulled her hand away slightly. “I’ll give you this. But then you leave. I won’t have anything brought down upon us. We’ve been through enough. We don’t want your fight. Go away. As far as you can. And never come back.”

  “Did you read it?”

  She stared me straight in the eyes. “Yes. And though I know you won’t listen, you should do what he says.”

  She pressed the paper into my hand before heading back toward the house. I unfolded the paper as she closed the door, the unmistakable click of the lock like a gunshot.

  LEAVE ME ALONE. GO HOME OR I’LL HURT YOU.

  I laughed until my stomach clenched.

  What if Peter hadn’t caught the wolf?

  What then?

  NOVEMBER CAME IN with a wave of cold air that chilled me to my bones. I was always cold, no matter how many layers I wore. I slept in the truck more than in a bed. I felt like I was moving through water, slowly drowning.

  One night I lay curled on the seat, my knees bumping against the dashboard, a hand in my hair as Kelly hummed quietly.

  I turned my face into his stomach and breathed him in. It almost felt real. If I tried hard enough, I could convince myself it was.

  He pressed a finger against my ear and said, “I hated school. I was never very good at it. I didn’t like being trapped inside all day. Green Creek was better in most ways, but I didn’t want to be in a classroom. After being surrounded by wolves for most of my life, the humans smelled weird. But then I took a physics class and learned about quantum mechanics.”

  I groaned. “Seriously? Haven’t I suffered enough?”

  He smacked my forehead. “Hush. Listen. There’s this idea that we’re all floating through time and space, a collection of particles like stardust. And every now and then, these particles collide, and for a moment everything is bright and real and we exist together. I think about that a lot.”

  I could barely breathe. “I wish you were here.”

  “And I wish you weren’t. This can’t go on forever, Carter. Soon you’re going to be standing on a ledge. And you’ll either have to back away from it or jump. And I don’t know what’ll happen to you if you do.” His hand went back to my hair, his fingernails scraping against my scalp.

  “I’m close.”

  “To the ledge?”

  “To him.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  He let it be. “What are you going to say if you find him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The first thing. Say you actually catch up to him. He’s standing in front of you, demanding to know what the hell you’re doing and why you didn’t listen to him.”

  “He’ll be scowling,” I whispered.

  Kelly snorted. “Well, yeah. He’s a Livingstone. It’s their default setting. Speaking of, you sure you want to get involved with that?”

  I turned over in his lap, looking up at him. “Seemed to work out for Mark okay.”

  He smiled down at me. “It did. But it also came with a lot of baggage. I can’t imagine it’ll be any easier with him.” He paused, considering. “That and the fact that he has a penis, which you have no idea what to do with.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be honest. I haven’t really thought about that part yet. Baby steps.”

  He traced my eyebrows with the tip of a finger. “There could be others. It doesn’t just have to be him.”

  “You could say the same about Robbie. But you didn’t let that stop you.”

  “At least Robbie doesn’t come with a psychotic extended family.” He grimaced. “Michelle Hughes doesn’t count.”

  “Why Robbie?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There could be others. It doesn’t just have to be him.”

  “But it was.”

  “How did you know?”

  He pressed his finger against my chin. “It wasn’t like that. At first.”

  “I know. I was there.”

  He said, “I think it was…. You know how in winter, the days are short and the nights are long?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s how it was for me. It was a long winter night, and then one day it was like the sun rose for the first time since I could remember. I saw him and I felt… warm. Alive. I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t know if I wanted to do anything about it.”

  “But you did, even though you were scared.”

  “It’s a scary thing.”

  “I’m scared too,” I whispered to him even though he was Not-Kelly. “And I don’t know how not to be.”

  “That’s okay. Tell me. You find him. You’re standing before him. You see his face, and he’s scowling at you. What’s the first thing you say?”

  I thought for a long moment. “Years.”

  “Years?”

  I nodded. “I would say to him… you were there for years. You wouldn’t leave me alone. You stayed by my side, and I didn’t understand why. I didn’t like it at first. I hated it at first, if I’m being honest. I had this shadow, this great, hulking shadow that didn’t know what privacy meant. I mean, have you ever tried to jerk off when a wolf is scratching at the door trying to get in? It’s fucking terrible and—”

  “Carter.”

  “Right. Sorry. Um. Okay. I hated it for a little while. But then I just… didn’t. It became part of me. I would say you became part of me. A constant. And I didn’t know what I had until it was gone. I’m sorry that I didn’t see you for what you were. I’m sorry that I took you for granted. I’m sorry that I let you go. And I know you don’t want me here, and I know you said you didn’t want me, didn’t want our pack, but maybe… maybe you could see me. Because I see you now. I see you, and I don’t know if I ever want to see anyone else. I slept better when you were curled around me. I dreamed that we were running, just you and me. I want to know everything. Where you came from. What you’re like. What makes you happy. What you thought about when you saw me for the first time, if you could even think at all. Why did you stay with me for as long as you did? And then I would say hey, and hi, and hello, Gavin, hello. My name is Carter. And I think you’re my….” I couldn’t finish.

  “Penis and all?”

  “I’m pretty sure I can figure that part out. I’m a quick learner.”

  He laughed until he cried. “That sounds pretty good.”

  I closed my eyes.

  He said, “The burner phone in your bag. All it would take is a phone call and this could be over. You know I would pick up. You could hear my voice, and I would yell and scream at you and demand to know where you were. I’d tell you to stay right there, that we were coming for you because I would never let you go. Do you know how easy it would be? Carter… do it. Please. For me. For your pack. For yourself.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can,” he snapped, and I flinched. “Why are you doing this to yourself? Didn’t you trust us? Didn’t you trust me? We would have helped you with anything. With everything. We were moving heaven and earth to find him. To bring him back to you.”

  “Were you? Or were you looking for Robert Livingstone?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  I tilted my head back against the window. “Do you ever think what it would be like? If we weren’t who we are. If we weren’t Bennetts.”

  “Who would we be?”

  I shrugged. “Anyone. No one. People wouldn’t look to us to sacrifice everything we have. We give them our blood, our lives, and it’s never enough. They always want more. And it never ends. Joe is a king, like our father. Mom is a queen. In Caswell, after everything was done and they were starting to rebuild, they
looked to Joe to fix them. To fix it all. And since I was his second, they looked to me too. They called me a prince. I hated it.”

  “They need hope,” Kelly said quietly. “That’s what they see in us. That’s why they need us. To fight for them.”

  “Maybe they should learn to fight for themselves.”

  When I opened my eyes again, Kelly was gone.

  The cab of the truck was cold.

  I tugged my jacket tighter around me and slept.

  My dreams were green, green, green, and I was running through the trees, my paws digging into the earth. Around me, my pack sang their wolfsong, and I was home.

  THE FULL MOON IN NOVEMBER fell on a Friday.

  Kelly was with me most days. He would stay for hours. Sometimes he wouldn’t speak. Other times he would tell me stories that I already knew, stories about our father, our mother. About Joe and Ox. Gordo and Mark. Chris and Tanner and Rico and Jessie. It was like he was plucking memories from my head and laying them out bare. For all I knew, he was. He was a ghost, but he was part of me. A projection.

  I looked in the rearview mirror a lot, not recognizing the stranger staring back at me. He was thin, his cheekbones pronounced under a scraggly beard, circles under his eyes like bruises. I flashed my eyes at him.

  He flashed his back.

  Blue.

  Then orange.

  Blue.

  Then orange.

  Sometimes I dreamed in violet, of a locked door where something heavy scratched on the other side. It whispered let me in let me in i promise it will be easy i promise it won’t hurt i promise you won’t regret it just let me in let me let me let me in.

  I didn’t.

  But it was getting harder to ignore.

  As the full moon approached, I crossed into Minnesota, following the directions of a witch in Kentucky who wanted nothing to do with wolves.

  The air grew colder.

  The sky was covered in a blanket of thick gray clouds.

  It smelled like snow.

  I didn’t know then that it was all about to end.

  Here, at last.

  I was being hunted.

  awake

  Isabella, Minnesota, was barely a blip on the road. A sign announced the town followed by a couple of buildings, but it looked dead. It reminded me of a place in Virginia called Lignite, where we’d fought for a member of our pack on a bridge.

  The woods around Isabella were thick. I’d seen signs telling me I was in the Superior National Forest, and I tried to remember if I’d ever heard of a wolf pack here. It seemed like the perfect place. It was in the middle of nowhere, and it felt free. But the territory was empty.

  The moon was tugging on me, scratching at the back of my mind. It was getting harder and harder to ignore it.

  I drove through Isabella and didn’t see anyone. Small towns lay ahead, the closest almost thirty miles away. It seemed like a good place to stop. I would be safe here. I heard deer moving in the trees, and I wanted to find them. To chase them. To eat them. But not yet. I was close. I knew I was close.

  I pulled the truck onto a dirt road. The canopy of the trees hung over it, creating a natural tunnel unlike anything I’d ever seen. I almost missed it. It was hidden away, the road almost overgrown.

  The truck bounced on the old road, the potholes deep. Branches scratched against the sides. It was going on four in the afternoon, but the darkened sky above made it feel much later. The moon hid behind those clouds. My gums itched.

  I was on the road for almost ten minutes before it ended in a small clearing. At one end of the clearing was a run-down house. The paint had long since peeled away, the wood weathered, looking almost charred. There was a hole in the roof near the front, about two feet across. The roof over the porch had collapsed.

  The door was closed.

  Two of the front windows were busted out, glass lying in the grass.

  I stopped the truck.

  My skin was vibrating as if a low electric current was coursing through me.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

  Kelly said, “Maybe you should leave.”

  I didn’t look at him. “Do you feel that?”

  “Carter. You need to go.”

  “Why?”

  “Something’s wrong with this place. It feels….”

  “Haunted.”

  He touched my arm. “Yes.”

  I looked down at his hand. “I’m already haunted.”

  “By me.” He pulled away, folding his hands in his lap. “I’m just a figment of your imagination. Maybe even your conscience.” He shook his head. “Whatever I am, I’m telling you this isn’t a good place.”

  I looked back at the house. “I don’t know.”

  I could feel him glaring at me. “Remember when we went to that old witch’s house by the sea while trying to find Richard Collins? You said that was the point in horror movies where you yelled at the screen for people to not go inside the house.”

  I reached for the door handle. “I’m a werewolf. I’m the one usually waiting inside the house.”

  “It wasn’t funny then, and it’s not funny now. Don’t be stupid. Get out of here. Spend the full moon somewhere else.”

  “There’s no one else around.” I glanced over at him. “I’ll be right back.”

  He groaned. “That’s exactly what you’re not supposed to say. Jesus Christ.”

  I opened the door and climbed out of the truck.

  Not-Kelly did too. It struck me that I’d never actually seen him get out of the truck before. He was just always there.

  But now?

  Now I heard the door creak as he opened it, felt it rock when he slammed it shut behind him. I heard his footsteps on the dirt road. But I couldn’t hear his heart. It was like it was dead in his chest.

  He stopped in front of the truck. “Well?”

  I stared at him with a roiling sense of unease.

  “What?” he asked.

  I shook my head slowly.

  He grunted. “Let’s get this over with. And I swear to god, if something jumps out at me and I scream, you can’t make fun of me or I’ll punch you in the junk.”

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  We walked toward the house.

  His arm brushed mine.

  I could feel the hairs on his forearm. The delicate bones in his wrist.

  I wondered if I was asleep.

  If none of this was real.

  I extended the claws on my right hand. I held up my left hand and scraped a claw against my palm. I winced as I drew blood. Pain.

  I felt pain.

  It wasn’t a dream.

  I stared down at my hand as the wound healed.

  “What did you do that for?” Kelly asked.

  He was watching me with those bright blue eyes. “Do you remember that day in the woods before we left Maine? Just you and me. Dad said he didn’t know when we’d come back, so if there was anything we needed to do, we had to do it then.”

  Kelly nodded. “We were walking. To nowhere. Anywhere. We didn’t have a destination in mind.”

  “And you asked me a question.”

  “I asked you if things were going to change for us. Joe was hollowed out and empty, Mom was barely holding on, Mark wasn’t talking, and Dad always had this pinched look on his face. I didn’t know what was going to happen. It felt like we were falling apart. I didn’t want to lose you too. You promised me that would never happen.” He raised his right hand, palm toward me before he closed it into a fist. “You cut your hand. And then mine. You were quick, before it could heal. You pressed your blood against mine. You said we’d always be together.”

  “Yeah. I did.” Even though it was cold enough to see my breath, sweat rolled down the back of my neck.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I love you,” I told him. “You’re my tether.”

  He smiled. “I know I am. You’re my big brother. There’s no one like you in all the world.” His smil
e faded. “And that means you should listen to me. Let’s go, okay? Just you and me. We’ll get out of here, find a place where we can run together. Just like we used to.”

  I wanted that almost more than anything.

  I said, “I don’t know how much longer I have.”

  He cocked his head. “Until what?”

  “It’s breaking. In my head. I thought… I thought you’d be enough. But it’s like it was before. I can feel it pulling on me.”

  He took a step toward me. “I can’t be everything, Carter. I want to be, but I can’t. A tether can only do so much. Wolves aren’t meant to be alone. You need more than this. More than me. I’m nothing but a ghost. A memory. And it’s not enough.”

  I looked back at the house as the first snow started to fall. It was nothing more than a flurry, the air filled with dancing flakes. It felt cool against my heated skin. “I could have killed those people at the bar.”

  “You wanted to,” he said. “It was close.”

  “Yes.”

  “What happens when you can’t stop yourself? Do you really want to take that risk?”

  I could feel him staring after me as I walked toward the house. I climbed the porch, stepping over the beams that had fallen. The door was peeling. The doorknob was cold to the touch. I turned it, but it barely moved.

  Locked.

  I pushed against it. I barely had to put any pressure on it before the wood cracked and gave way. The door swung open, the hinges creaking.

  The house smelled of mold and dust.

  I sneezed. It echoed flatly through the house.

  Snow drifted in from the hole in the roof, landing in what had once been a living room. The fireplace was made of crumbling brick. There was an overturned chair, the fabric ripped, stuffing sticking out, yellowed and withered. The floor groaned with every step I took.

  A picture hung crooked on the wall. The glass was cracked. The photograph had three people in it. A man with a quiet smile. A woman with sparkling eyes.

  And a boy.

  He stood between the man and woman, each with a hand on his shoulder. His eyes were dark, his hair black and windswept.

  I’d seen a photograph once of when Gordo was a kid, hanging off of Mark’s back. The boy on the wall looked almost the same. The shape of the nose was off, the bridge bumpier. His cheeks were freckled. His eyes were farther apart. He was stockier than Gordo had ever been.