The Black Wolves of Boston (eARC)

by Wen Spencer

  There were discounted Halloween decoration, and everything needed for fall cleanup and winterization in the first two aisles. Employees were setting up displays for Christmas lights in the third. The thought of missing the holidays with his family made the wolf whimper. He hurried around the corner into the laundry aisle. There were hampers, mesh bags, clotheslines, pins, hangers, folding drying racks, and plastic laundry baskets. Simple unadorned stuff to make his life easier without all the messy emotions that an imploded life left behind.

  * * *

  The garden hoses were in the garden section. Next to them were the statues of gnomes and a vast array of frogs. He had no idea that frogs were so popular. Only the one that was the size of a bulldog was realistic. The rest were weird cartoon versions doing all sorts of unlikely things.

  "I had this weird dream last night." The garden statues reminded him of his nightmare. Winnie might know if the place was real. "I was at this park someplace in Boston. At least, I think it was Boston. But there was the shallow pool with frog statues. One was thinking and the other was fishing."

  "That's the Frog Pond. It's in the Boston Common. It's my second favorite part of the park. Third. Second. The swan boats are my favorite, definitely, even though they're horribly touristy. My mother used to take me on them when I was little and tell me the story of ugly duckling who grew up to be a beautiful swan. It gave me so much hope. But the Frog Pond is second favorite. In the summer, you can wade in it and play in the sprinklers. In the winter, you can ice skate and drink hot chocolate. They floated jack-o-lanterns in it for Halloween."

  Joshua shivered as he remembered that the last jack-o-lantern he'd seen had been the Huntsman's head.

  Winnie didn't seem to notice. "It was magical. They light the pumpkins up and float them out into the water. The statue of the ducklings from Make Way for Ducklings are adorable but just there's not much to that. A mother duck and eight ducklings. She's fairly big, large enough that you can sit on her. You could trip over the babies if you weren't paying attention."

  "So there's frog statues at the Frog Pond?" Joshua tried steering the conversation back to his dream. Not that he really wanted to talk about it; it was upsetting that he'd dreamed about someplace that was real. How did he know that the wolf hadn't taken him out for a walk in the middle of the night? Judging by the black fur in his bed, he'd spent part of the night as a wolf without realizing it.

  Oh God, what if he'd molested Decker?

  We can check on him when we get back! Tail wag!

  "No!" Joshua snatched up a bright pink flamingo and shoved it into his cart.

  Winnie eyed him uncertainly. "There are a whole bunch of bronze frog statues, all in silly poses. My favorite is Joann, she's wearing a snorkel mask. The fisherman is Tommy and Angela is the thinker. It's definitely my second favorite place. Least favorite? The graveyards. They used to hang 'witches' there." She used her fingers to form the quotes. "As if they could! No, the women they hung were all people like me. Sad to say, we tend to be restless spirits of the creepy kind when we're murdered."

  "They don't talk?" Joshua struggled with the idea that "Angela" had a male voice in his dream.

  "The ghosts?"

  "The frogs."

  "Not unless they're possessed---which considering how close they are to the graveyard---is a distinct possibility. We should go check."

  "We are shopping!" Joshua waved a second flamingo at her. He was not getting on the Vespa.

  "After we take everything back to Decker's. We can take the subway. It's on the Red Line."

  He should find out why he was dreaming of places he'd never been. He wasn't sure which was worse, suddenly having weird true dreams about talking frogs or being a sleepwalking werewolf. If it was the later, he'll need to figure out some way to keep the wolf locked in the house at night.

  * * *

  Winnie wouldn't come into the house. They'd called a taxi to haul everything back to Decker's. She used the mailbox as an excuse to stay outside and install it. Afterwards she carefully swept all the dead leaves off the porch, positioned the welcome mat, and danced the flamingos around the yard to find the spots for them. No matter where she placed them, the bright pink bird statues looked like they were trying to run away.

  He'd second thoughts on the flamingos, the doormat (it said "Wipe Your Paws") and taking her to the Frog Pond with him. After she'd been so patient, though, he felt he should leave the statues in place and let her act as native guide.

  * * *

  "The Frog Pond" was a cement kiddie pool. It looked exactly as it had in Joshua's dream. If he was a character out of Lord of the Rings, he could probably tell if a wolf had stalked through the park the night before. Instead he could only stand staring at the pond, wondering. Prophetic dream or sleepwalking wolf?

  The pool was set in a long winding depression within the park so all the land sloped down to a wide sidewalk that ringed the pond. The rain clouds reflected in the still water. Because of the reflection, it was impossible to see the bottom. There were wooden placards lined up down the middle of the pool, giving a proper sense of how shallow the water was. It seemed ankle deep. The signs stated "No Wading" with a picture of dog to indicate they meant pets too.

  "Isn't it wonderful?" Winnie skipped across the brick sidewalk to wrap her arms around the neck of large bronze frog statue in the thinking pose. The frog was almost as big as Winnie. "They'll drain it, clean it, put up barricades and make it an ice skating rink in a few days. It hasn't been cold enough yet. In the spring they have a carousel. When they light the carousel up at night, it's magical."

  Magical. That was what he was afraid of.

  Joshua crept forward to poke the fisherman frog. It was solid cold metal. It looked exactly as he remembered it from his dream. Even the bronze worms in the can at it the feet had the same googly eyes. How did he know? Had he been here when he was young? Certainly there were spots in his memory still missing from the amnesia. His parents, though, never left Central New York. If it wasn't within a two-hour drive, it didn't exist.

  "Have the frogs ever talked to anyone?" Joshua asked.

  "No."

  Even if he lost total control of the wolf, how did he explain the talking statues? The creepy black thing in the water?

  "The prince used to live a few blocks from here." Winnie pointed off to the right. "They had a bung of big beautiful four-story houses, all side by side, taking up the entire block. Bay windows in the front. Little private walled-in backyards. You'd never know by looking that wolves lived there. So quiet, clean, and orderly. They'd lived there since God knows when, like the 1640s. Not in those exact houses. I mean the first houses were probably little log cabins. The Pilgrims landed in Plymouth in 1620. The brownstones were only a hundred and fifty years old, give or take a few decades. The princess would often bring her younglings down to play in the pond in the summertime. It was kind of funny but a little sad too. As soon as they arrived, everyone would get the feeling that they should go."

  "Why?"

  "Because most people could sense that the children weren't entirely human. People are like herd animals at the core. They feel safest when everyone around them is just like them. Scientists call it the reptile brain but it's more like zebra brain. Run from anything that isn't four-legged and striped. If you can't run from it, try kicking it to death."

  That would explain his childhood.

  He stared at the water reflecting the dull gray sky. Not that he wanted the frogs to start talking to him, but he wanted to understand how he had dreamed of a place he'd never seen before. Everyone kept talking about breaches. Maybe that was what the black thing was in the water. A hole in reality that was letting a monster into their world.

  Next thing he knew, he was ankle deep in water, snarling at the bottom of the pond.

  "Oh geez!" Joshua shouted at the wolf. "What the hell are you doing? You didn't even take off our shoes!"

  The wolf didn't listen, splashing about to pounce on every
shadow, snarling in anger.

  "The Central Burying Ground is over by Boylston Street." Winnie ignored Joshua to point south toward a baseball field. "I usually avoid that. The swan boats are across Charles Street." This was to the west. "The Make Way for Ducklings statues are over there. My mom used to take me on a boat ride and then we'd have high tea at Bristol Lounge at Four Seasons. They have fifteen different types of teas and just wonderful pastries."

  The wolf stopped snarling. "Pastries?"

  "Scones and finger sandwiches and...are we going for tea?"

  The wolf had bounded out of the pond, caught Winnie's hand and was squishing in the direction that the wolf thought the Four Seasons must lie. "Apparently. We'll come back later."

  "That's probably a good idea."

  * * *

  The coin laundry fascinated Decker. After a long but uneventful afternoon exploring Boston Commons, Joshua had talked Decker into an evening of doing wash at a nearby laundry. The vampire kept opening and closing the lids of the washers. Luckily the only other customer was a college student who sat with headphones on, listening to music while reading a textbook.

  "You don't need to light the water heater or engage the agitator mechanism or hand feed the clothes through a wringer?" Decker complained earlier that they didn't need to go out to do laundry. He owned a washing machine and he'd only crushed his hand once on the wringer torture device.

  "No, it does all that automatically." Joshua suspected that Decker's real objection to the laundry was that it seemed a step toward Joshua moving out of the house.

  "We must get one of these," Decker stated firmly. "Do they sell them for private use?"

  "Yeah. We could have gotten them at Home Depot, along with the refrigerator and the range." Joshua winced as he remembered how much those two appliances had cost Decker.

  "When we are done here, let us go and get them."

  Joshua told himself that Decker actually needed a new washer and dryer. "We'll have to move the old machine out and make sure there's the right connections. Power. Water. Maybe paint the laundry room."

  It was a dreary little cave. So far the magic formula of clean and paint was producing better results than tackling the weirdness head on, à la the Frog Pond or the conversation with the ghost.

  "What color do you want to paint it?" Joshua was sitting on one of the washing machines, hemming his blue jeans by hand. He'd bought the shortest inseam that he could find without shifting into the boy's section but the legs were nearly a foot too long. He dug through his messenger bag to find the paint samples that he'd picked up that morning. He fanned the papers across the lid of the machine containing his sheets and blankets. (He really should have washed them before using them but now was better than never.) "I think the teal blue is too dark. It should be something bright, like yellow. Or whatever this is. Filtered Sunlight. Maybe not. Beacon Blue? It's not as dark as what I used in the kitchen."

  "I said I like green." Decker was staring at the dryer that Joshua had just started with his underwear and socks. He opened the door and stuck his hand into it.

  "Oh, just let it run!" Joshua cried.

  "So it blows hot air over them until they are dry?"

  "Not if you stop it! Gee, how do you start it?" Joshua studied the dryer's controls from where he sat. "Oh, hit that button there!"

  "This one?" Decker pointed at the wrong button.

  "No, the other one. Yes. Hit it. Hit it!"

  Decker grinned at him slyly, his brown eyes lighting up with merriment. "I'd hit that."

  Joshua pursed his lips together to keep from smiling. "Not funny." Not in the light of what had happened yesterday. How did Decker do that anyhow? Had he spent hundreds of years practicing every possible double entendre? How did he even know that one?

  Sorrow filled Decker's face. "I'm sorry. That's a bad habit of mine: talking."

  The wolf had reached out and caught Decker's hand before Joshua could think of a safe response.

  Joshua looked away as embarrassment burned up from his collar. They froze in place, holding hands, both studiously ignoring the fact that they were. Decker's hand was larger than his and cool to the touch.

  "It's okay," Joshua forced out, then added truthfully, "It was funny."

  Decker patted him on the head. "I will be more careful with what I say."

  The wolf wiggled with happiness and let Decker escape to restart the dryer.

  Joshua focused back on sewing the hem and explaining his afternoon. "High tea at the Bristol Lounge had all this really good finger food, little sandwiches and stuff, but it was all just one bite. Winnie said she was on a diet but I think she was just being nice---and cautious---and let the wolf eat her share too. We went back to the park afterwards. I thought Winnie could maybe talk to the ghosts in the area, see if they knew anything, but she said they were too scary to deal with without safeguards. We poked at all the frogs, but none of them said anything. The wolf kept wading in the pond. I couldn't keep him out of it."

  "Saul told me that dreams cannot be taken literally especially when they are prophetic." Decker took off his long wool coat. "The speakers were probably not frogs but people you do not know. Any image your brain supplied would be wrong, so it substituted in an obviously wrong picture, one with allegorical references. The fisherman being a hunter. Killer. The contemplative frog being a peaceful person, innocent of actions that warrant whatever the fisherman does to him."

  Decker laid his folded coat behind Joshua. He did it without teasing. It was simply that the vampire took good care of his expensive clothes. It was the wolf that tilted slightly, so he could smell Decker better as he brushed past.

  Distracted, Joshua accidently stabbed himself with the needle. "Ow. Stupid wolf!"

  Decker caught his hand and peered closely at the welling blood. Joshua blushed at the touch of his cool fingers, expecting some innuendo about sucking. Decker surprised him with a very concerned, "Those aren't silver are they?"

  "What? The needles?"

  "Silver is poison to you. You have to be careful with it." Decker picked up the package and read the label. "It doesn't say."

  "I'm pretty sure needles are stainless steel."

  "They look like silver." Decker took his hand again to examine it with medical care. "I don't know much about sewing; I've always used tailors. I know at one time needles and such were very expensive. A man had to give his wife a special allowance just to cover the cost. They called it pin money."

  Decker had given Joshua the money to buy the needles, pins and thread to hem up the jeans. The man was concerned enough, though, not to make the obvious connection. Not that he had to; Joshua had made it without help. This time the burn of embarrassment reached the tips of Joshua's ears.

  "I'm pretty sure needles are stainless steel." Joshua eyed his finger. The blood was gone and there was no sign of the pinprick. He became aware that with both their heads bowed over his hand, their foreheads nearly touched. "It's fine."

  "I think you're right. They must be steel." Decker let go of his hand.

  "Saul had dreams that came true?" Joshua sat on his hand to keep it from taking hold of Decker's again. Stop that!

  "No, one of his cousins. From time to time a divine ability appears in the Grigori bloodlines. Traditionally, that Grigori does not become a Virtue but serves in the Central Office, coordinating the others as a Dominion, even though they are nearly as strong as Powers. Elise's cousin Clarice is such as person."

  Joshua made note of the various Grigori ranks to ask about later. He wanted to stay focused on the Frog Pond. "What about werewolves? Do the other wolves dream about places they'd never been?"

  "I don't know enough about their magic to say."

  "Maybe I'm not a pack wolf. Maybe I'm some kind of weird monster that will go all evil on people come the first full moon. When was it again? Shit. Tonight." He glanced at the college student who would be in harm's way if he wolfed out completely.

  "You may think that the wolf is
controlling you. This---" He tapped Joshua on the temple. "---is what controls you. And this." He spread his hand over Joshua's heart, making it flutter oddly in his chest. "And, unfortunately, this." He poked Joshua in the stomach. "Always remember that a hungry wolf is a dangerous wolf. Okay?"

  "The pizza dude should be here any minute." Joshua focused back on hemming his blue jeans. "I don't know how you can say I'm in control when the wolf keeps pulling stupid shit like attacking the pond."

  "I think the dream scared you more than you know. You went with Winnie because you were worried. When you discovered that the pond was a real place, you had still no idea why you dreamed about it. You had gone to do something. You wanted to do something. The wolf merely acted on your desires."

  "To attack the pond?"

  "Well, you've established beyond a doubt that there is nothing in the pond."

  "Woot woot."

  "Yes." Decker paused to consider the phrase before repeating it. "Woot woot."

  Joshua wasn't sure if Decker understood what he meant. "Okay, sure, the wolf accomplished something..."

  "You accomplished something. You are the wolf. The wolf is you."

  "Oh! Pizza!" Joshua waved to the deliveryman that arrived holding a thermal bag.

  For the next ten minutes the bag, then the box, and then the first three slices of pizza totally fixated Joshua's attention. The deliveryman was apparently paid because he disappeared. Joshua was licking the grease from his fingers when he realized that Decker was watching him with delight.

  "What?" Joshua braced himself for an innuendo.

  "You take such joy in eating."

  Joshua squinted as he parsed the words. No. Nothing kinky about them.

  Decker picked up Joshua's shortened blue jeans and started to carefully sew stitches into the hem where Joshua had left off. "Dr. Huff said, though, you should eat meat."

  "This is sausage, pepperoni and Canadian bacon. Besides, when we have pizza delivered, there's no waitress that keeps coming back and asking if you're sure you don't want anything. You really don't eat any real food?"