The man faltered, for a moment, frustration fluttering very briefly across his expression, before he forced his face into a calm, civil mask.
“Fine. My name is Anthony Eden. Nice to meet you. Whether you want to formally introduce yourself to me or not, we still have to talk.”
“I don't have to do shit! You think you can just follow me home in your stupid creepy BMW and start fights with my friends, and that's gonna make me listen to anything you say?”
Anthony started to reply, then stopped himself, looking bemused, “BMW? What are you talking about?”
“What? I'm talking about-- y'know” Isaac gestured accusingly at the black monstrosity of a car, squatting on the kerb, and Anthony's expression of confusion melted back into one of irritation.
“My car is not a BMW.” He said, as if the suggestion that he would ever drive such a thing was the highest of insults. He moved to the back door of the car, closest to Isaac, and opened it with a soft click, before turning to glance back at Isaac, “Get in. We'll go for a drive.”
Isaac – who, while rushing downstairs to chase off the Illuminati men in black, hadn't had the foresight to put on any shoes – made no move to comply with this suggestion. Instead, he folded his arms, and scowled at Anthony.
“I actually think I'm just going to go back to bed.”
“I'm not going to stand here and argue with you,” Anthony said, the clipped, light accent slipping down into a low, rumbling growl, “You are going to do as you're told. Get in.”
There was no rational reason for Isaac to comply. Anthony was obnoxious. He was a creepy rich stranger who sniffed and stalked and pushed in front of Isaac at the nurses station, and Isaac didn't want to go anywhere with him. But in that moment, something in the low timbre of the other man's voice short-circuited all of those good intentions. It felt like someone had shoved their hand into the cavity of Isaac's chest, and slowly tightened their grip around his heart, and before he could think straight enough to stop himself, he was moving. Walking barefoot over the gritty pavement, and ducking into the car, as instructed.
The car was spacious, in the way that Isaac assumed business class fight were spacious. All suede upholstery and mahogany finish, complete with a blackout screen separating the passengers from the driver. Isaac twisted in his seat, and looked back to Kelloggs's van, where Tommy had belatedly flung open the door to charge to his rescue. The opposite door opened, then slammed shut again, and Anthony Eden leaned back in his seat beside him. .
“Take us out of town.” He instructed, then, glanced to Isaac again, “And you, put your seatbelt on.”
Again, Isaac was obeying before he found the presence of mind to resist, biting down hard on his tongue until the click of the buckle fixed itself into place.
“What-- How did you--” He shifted his gaze up, to stare accusingly at Anthony, as the car pulled away from the kerb “What was that?”
“Instinct.” Anthony replied, stoically, “The same physical imperative that drives animals to survive in the wild. You might not like me, you might not want to do what I tell you, but you know where you are in the food chain, so your body obeys.”
“Oh be fucked, you asswipe! You're not gonna eat me!”
“Only by the grace of god I didn't last night! Stumbling around drunk in the small hours of the morning-- honestly.”
“You're not a fucking werewolf!” Isaac yelled, because he was a young man who knew which way the wind blew. If you got attacked by a wolf in the dead of night, woke up with all your injuries healed, remarkably enhanced senses, and a strange man who mysteriously knew about the attack trying to track you down? Well, that was some werewolf shit right there, and Isaac was having none of it.
Anthony Eden stared bleakly at him, sighed, and shifted in his seat to stare out the darkened window. When he did speak, it seemed like he was talking to himself.
“What a disaster...”
“Shut up! It's not a disaster because nothing fucking happened!”
“After all these years. All the care I've taken, all the sheep and goats and foxes, trying to stay away from humans...”
“I'm not buying it. You're full of shit.”
“But no, I have to stumble into this backwater-- God, if I was going to bite someone, why couldn't I have done it in New York? In Paris...”
“Hey...”
“...I could have had someone civilized...”
“Hey!”
“...Someone handsome...”
“Hey fuck you!”
“Instead I'm lumbered with this obstinate--”
Isaac smacked him in the face with Saint Anger, with a sharp, flat, crack of sound. Anthony made a noise that was more surprise than pain, and rounded back on Isaac, eyes burning.
“How dare you?”
“You broke my arm, ate my neck, and turned me into a Werewolf! So I reckon you definitely had that coming!”
“Don't do it again!”
Isaac's grip on the record immediately loosened, but he focused all his energy on holding on, and, remarkably, it worked. Anthony leaned back in his seat, as the car cruised out of town and into the desert gloom.
“You remember what happened last night.” Anthony said, “And you know what you've experienced since. In the hospital. In the street just now. You know what I've done to you.”
There was a kind of despair in the man's voice. A thick layer of regret. Despite the temptation to smack him in the face again, Isaac couldn't help but feel some measure of sympathy with him.
“Yeah, I know. But look, it doesn't mean we have to be friends or anything--”
Anthony laughed a miserable bark of a laugh.
“Not friends, perhaps. But it does make us pack. It makes me responsible for you--”
“Well consider your responsibility waived.” Isaac said, without missing a beat, “Like-- I get it. You're the kind of guy, you bite someone? It's like knocking them up. You don't wanna have to raise the kid, but you really don't wanna be that asshole who leaves a poor single mother to rot in a no horse town like this one.” Anthony began to object, but Isaac waved a hand in dismissal, and steamrolled over his protestations, “It's nice that you wanna do right by me and all, but man, I am telling you from experience, sometimes a one parent home is just fine. I don't even like my dad, you feel me? And my momma is easily worth four or five of someone else's folks, so-- what I'm sayin' is, y'all should just quit this town now and not worry about it, instead of hanging around and dragging out a messy divorce.”
When he finished, Anthony was staring at Isaac with a mixture of confusion and pity, and the car was rolling to a gentle stop out in the black desert night.
“I can't leave you,” Anthony said, slowly and patiently, “Because it would be enormously easy for you to accidentally murder someone without proper guidance.”
“Well,” Isaac pointed out, “You nearly accidentally murdered me, so if you're the one giving the guidance I ain't so sure you're a trustworthy tutor...”
Anthony grimaced, “That wasn't supposed to happen. Your backwater town isn't listed on google maps. I was supposed to have a hundred miles of empty desert out here...”
“Well, you didn't.” Isaac eyed Anthony ungenerously. “So what's your deal, you do all your business in Paris and New York and shit, then come to Oklahoma to run around chasing rabbits once a month? Because you wouldn't want to endanger any potential clients, right?”
Again, Anthony gave him one of those looks. Like the one he'd given when Isaac had called his car a BMW.
“I assure you, I have as many clients here in Oklahoma as I do anywhere else. My business is a universal one, thank you Isaac.”
“Let me guess,” Isaac proposed, “You're a banker. A thieving, economy toppling, wall street journal, international hedge funding--”
“I'm the founder of Edentity.”
“Secret Lizard Pers— Wait, Edentity? As in, the website Edentity?”
“It's more of a social media empire at this point.�
� Anthony corrected snittishly, “Website, youtube channel, blogging platform, app-- I should friend you on it, really. What's your last name?”
“I'm not a member. Boycotting, because I reckon technology is spying on us and shit!” Isaac said, with a kind of gleeful defiance, “You can follow my band on there though. Holy Isaac and the Saviour Flavour.”
Anthony gave him the sourest of looks. But, sure enough, dug his phone out of his pocket and tapped away at the screen, presumably searching out the Saviour Flavour's Edentity profile, before peering appraisingly down at the screen.
“You look like Blink 182.”
“We do not, you scrubbed up Coldplay listening bitch!”
Anthony looked briefly wounded, glancing up from his phone to Isaac.
“I like Blink 182!”
Isaac scrutinized him suspiciously. Searching for any hint of trickery in his words, but alas, Anthony had apparently, been trying to pay him a sincere compliment.
“Well. Maybe we look a bit like the drummer.” Isaac offered, as a condolence.
“He's the best one.” Anthony agreed.
There was a brief silence, after this ceasefire.
“Being real with you though, man.” Isaac offered, after a moment, “Even if we're werewolves, or pack, or whatever? I don't think that's going to make me like you.”
“You'd be surprised. I hated the man who bit me. Absolutely hated him. But the moon rose, and the change came over me, and then-- he was my alpha. Didn't matter that even the sight of him made me sick to my stomach as a human, as a wolf--” He paused, then threw Isaac another guilty look, “I really am sorry. I never wanted to be this, to anyone.”
Isaac shrugged. “It's cool. I mean. We just gotta get on with it, right?”
“I have to go to Tokyo next week, for a conference on duplicity and fraud online, but I'll be back in before the full moon, all right?”
Isaac shrugged, “Hey, take your time. I still reckon I'm gonna be a perfectly good werewolf all by myself.”
“Yes, I'm sure.” Anthony agreed, stiffly, in a tone that might not have been entirely truthful, and slowly, the car hummed back into motion. Turning in a smooth, eel like circle, to return to the dark town behind them, “Still, just to be safe, I'll return for you anyway.”
The car, which Anthony tersely informed Isaac was a Rolls Royce Phantom, thank you very much, swept silently through the streets, to deposit Isaac back outside the door of his apartment. Tommy and Kellogg were perched on his doorstep, keeping the door open, and awaiting his return.
Tommy rose when the car pulled up, his expression one of perfect stone, which only softened when Isaac crawled out of the car. Anthony, wisely, did not get out.
“Thanks for waiting for me guys.” Isaac told his band, “It's been such a weird fucking night. But, just so you guys know?” He had one hand still propped on the door to the Rolls Royce, but the other he spread wide and expressive, “I'm a werewolf now.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Demanded Anthony, from inside the car. Isaac ignored him, attention remaining fixedly on his band.
Kellogg raised a hand. “Can we all be werewolves?”
“No!” Cried Anthony, from inside the car.
“No.” Said Isaac, “That would be unsafe.” But while saying it, he winked and nodded.
—————-
The next two weeks passed in a strange normality. Isaac worked his shifts at Mr. Zhen's convenience store. The band wrote a new song (Oklahoma Wolfman, shittin' on your windshield, Oklahoma Wolfman gonna shit all over Tulsa, Oklahoma Wolfman don't give a fuck if you think you're the big dog, Oklahoma Wolfman here to stay! Oklahoma Wolfman wants blood!) and they performed it at their usual grimy dive bar. They were, in fact, too busy loudly declaring themselves to be werewolves, for Isaac to even take time out of the set to shit all over Leeching off London. This led, unbelievably, to a very, very drunk Harvey Roman swaying into Isaac at the bar, once both of their sets had been played and they were well plied with free drink, and slinging a comradely arm around his shoulders.
“Oklahoma Wolfman, eatin' up your pussy!” He sang, in Isaac's ear, “Oklahoma Wolfman, shittin' on your dick! Man, you hear that old shitkicker stormin' off to go round up his KKK buddies when you sang that part? Fuckin' hilarious, man! Oklahoma Wolfman, pissin' in your letterbox--”
“Bro,” Said Isaac, who could, in the haze of his drunkenness, apparently identify a compliment when it was coming at him, “You're such a good singer, bro. Like, I know I say that glam rock shit about you, but it's just because, when you do a song, your voice actually makes it sound like a song. That's cool, man. Like, Bikini Kill cool, only with a dude.”
“You're cool.” Harvey insisted, patting Isaac's cheek emphatically, “The whole werewolf thing is fuckin' genius man.”
“Hey,” Said Isaac, humbly, “I didn't even come up with the whole werewolf thing. You ever heard of-- Anthony Eden?”
“No.” Said Harvey, “Good band name though.”
“He invented-- you know Edentity? The website?”
Harvey shrugged, expression vacant and uncomprehending. He was so cool.
“Well, it's a website. And Anthony Eden, is some rich New York werewolf motherfucker, who invented it. And – get this – He fucking bit me last month.”
“What, seriously? Was this like a sex thing?”
“No!” Isaac protested, “It was a werewolf thing, man! He turned me into a werewolf!”
“Yeah but-- I mean, ain't like people accidentally bite each other. When was the last time you bit someone you weren't either fuckin' or fightin'?”
“I ain't like that with werewolves, man. It's different.”
“So you just bite people, whoever, whenever?”
“Yeah, motherfucker, I'm a teeth machine!”
Isaac gave Harvey a playful, drunken shove, which only made Harvey tighten the comradely arm around his shoulders into a full on, playful drunken headlock. Like muscle memory kicking in, they playfully, brawled their way out into the street, and rolled around in the mud, until Harvey gave a short, alarmed yelp.
“Ah! Did you-- Did you just fuckin' bite me, man?”
“I told you.” Said Isaac, from just below Harvey's armpit, where his head was still neatly jammed against his ribcage, “Motherfucking Oklahoma Wolfman teeth machine. I warned you, bro.”
Harvey released him with a little shove, and flopped back into the dusty sidewalk just as Tommy emerged to break them up.
“You all right there, Roman?” He asked Harvey, who had let his head drift back, and was staring up at the stars.
“Yeah. Reckon we're good here.”
“How 'bout you? Beatin' up on Harvey there, huh?”
The familiar feeling of Tommy's hand scooping up under his armpit roused Isaac a little from his drunkenness, and he mumbled a low sound of agreement into his bassist's shoulder. Tommy hauled him back to the van, where Kellogg was carefully and sombrely rolling a joint.
Tommy loaded Isaac into the van, nestled him neatly between the bass drum and the guitar amp, and climbed in behind him, to settle in for a long, dark morning of smoking and sleeping.
The next morning, Isaac woke with his face mashed gently against the side of his amplifier, and his legs in a warm tangle with those of his band mates. The inside of his mouth tasted of day old beer and smoke, and he dragged his dreary body upright enough to go digging through Kellogg's unconscious pockets for their keys.
Upon retrieving them, he scooched himself a little closer to the van doors, and let himself out into the balmy morning air.
The bar was closed. Roman had, apparently, either picked himself up or found someone else willing to do it, and a large, black Rolls Royce Phantom (and certainly not a BMW, Isaac reminded himself.) had parked up behind the van. Anthony was leaning against the wall of the empty bar, eating a plastic, disposable cup of granola and yogurt, which he looked up from when Isaac appeared.
“Sorry I missed your show last night.�
�� He offered, seemingly sincere, “I tried to get back for it, but my flight was delayed, and when you delay a sixteen hour flight--” He shrugged, helplessly.
“That's okay,” Isaac replied, a little muzzily. He was shirtless. Still coated in the layer of sweat, smoke and grime that a punk gig in a warm state inevitably stirs up, in a set of pleather leggings stuck full of safety pins. By contrast, Anthony was dressed in a fine, seersucker suit, and smelled like cherry blossom and faint, fragrant herbs, “We do kind of a lot of shows. You can come to the next one.”
“Yes! Night of the Living Shitkickers, from eight till late on the fifteenth of May!” Anthony smiled, like knowing that wasn't super, super lame of him, “I've already confirmed my attendance on Edentity.”
So lame. Not at all adorable. Completely uncool.
“Would you like some breakfast?”
Isaac scratched his stomach contemplatively, then shook his head.
“Don't think I could take food right now.”
“Coffee.”
Another, ponderous scratch.
“Yeah, could probably drink a coffee.”
They walked up the road to a small diner. Anthony powered through the last of his granola, outside, then they entered together, and ordered two cups of coffee from a teenage girl with dyed red hair, who was slumped impetuously behind the counter.
“It's a full moon in four days.” Anthony said, conversationally, as the teenager filled their coffee cups, “We should start making arrangements.”
“Four days.” Repeated Isaac. Four days was Thursday. Which was practically Friday. Which was as good as the weekend, “Cool. I'll keep it free.”
The girl handed them their coffees, and they stepped outside again.
“There's a forty mile hunting enclosure on the Texas Border. I hired it out for the two days either side of the full moon. Nothing but desert, scrub and wilderness. We'll be safe there.”
Some Punk Rock Werewolf Romance in the Oklahoma Sun Page 3
